“I’ll believe it when I see it” and “seeing is believing” are two phrases that haven’t aged well.
Nowadays, I’m skeptical of videos friends send me, photos that look like someone manipulated them and content designed to look like news articles with fake quotes.
Did White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt say the movie “Melania” sold more tickets than “Star Wars” and would be required viewing in schools?
No. It was a fake quote meant as satire, but people took it as fact and spread it online. It’s not real.
Did Renee Good’s car have anti-ICE stickers on it? No. If you saw content online showing otherwise, you saw an AI-generated image. The stickers were edited into those photos.
How do we navigate this world of bloggers, influencers and You-Tubers on top of traditional media (like newspapers) flooding the Internet every day?
I’m here to tell you, it’s challenging, and this is my job.
I’ve learned quite a bit from an organization called the News Literacy Project, which has a mission to give us the tools to help us discern what is true and make educated choices, an important thing to be able to do as the internet gets even more overwhelming and confusing.
Two Emmy award-winning veteran journalists, Judy Muller and George Lewis, have agreed to give a talk on Sunday, Feb. 22 on news literacy skills.
Mark your calendars for “Recognizing Credible News in a Time of Truth Decay” from 4-6 p.m. at the Decker Room at Space to Create, 675 Clinton St. in Ridgway. It’s free to attend and includes free childcare (reserve a spot by emailing roccnriver@gmail.com). The presentation is from 4-6 p.m.
So, why should you care about news literacy?
Our brains are wired to believe things we see with our own eyes. We now face a reality that has been altered — we cannot always believe what we see in videos and photos, or what we hear in audio recordings that have been manipulated.
The technology has become so sophisticated that it’s sometimes difficult to tell what is real.
Even telling the difference between news stories and opinion can be difficult sometimes, partially because of the way news outlets present this information.
There are a lot of new places people get information online, and not all of them are trustworthy.
It’s important to think about where our information comes from, and have a healthy skepticism about whether it’s trying to manipulate us. News literacy is an essential skill, ensuring we can distinguish between news sources and decide what to trust.
You might ask why this is relevant.
It comes down to provable, citable facts that we can all agree on to form a foundation for discussion. If you can’t tell what’s true, that foundation has been washed away and we have nothing solid to stand upon. We have no common ground to start from, and that makes it harder to discuss important topics we all care about and come to agreements.
There’s plenty of propaganda online now, using shocking headlines and exaggerated stories to influence your emotions, and heavily favor one point of view. It’s coming from all different sides — not necessarily always conservative or liberal. I’ve had folks share plenty of it with me, and they see no problem with it because they share what they agree with and don’t really think about whether it’s slanted. That’s what we call “confirmation bias,” and being able to recognize it is more important than ever.
News literacy is about learning the tools to be able to tell what is real and judge for yourself what you can trust, what you believe and what you base your decisions on.
It’s about learning how to do things like searching for images online to tell what has been manipulated. We can’t trust our eyes anymore.
In our line of work, we are taught to “trust but verify.” That has become even more critical in the age of AI, where fake videos can be conjured from simple prompts typed into programs. A pig riding a motorcycle? Sure. Just keep an eye out for a missing leg in the finished product.
This is all beside the fact that it just doesn’t make sense that a pig would be able to do this in the first place.
What it really comes down to is: if you want to be a more discerning news consumer, if you want to learn more tricks to help you figure out what kinds of information to trust, this news literacy training session is for you. It will help you arm yourself with tools to avoid getting duped by fake stuff online.
And if for some reason you can’t make it, please check out the News Literacy Project online at newslit.org. You can sign up for newsletters and get plenty of information from this independent, unbiased organization. They aren’t telling you what to think, but giving you tools to better navigate the overwhelming world we live in now.
Erin McIntyre is the co-publisher of the Ouray County Plaindealer. Email her at erin@ouraynews.com.
