AFTERWORDS
Fake news, real challenges
Newseum uses in-depth, nonpartisan content to battle fake news
BY BARBARA MCCORMACK
TEACHERS’ QUESTIONS
and concerns started
rolling in more than a
year ago. With the 2016
presidential election
ramping up, educators
had a sense early on
that this one was different, and they
were looking for new ways to bring cur-
rent events into their classroom without
sparking chaos.
By the time the election was over,
teachers weren’t the only ones sensing
a bigger shift in the events around us
and their coverage in the news media.
“Fake news” became a buzzword. News
producers and aggregators feared for
their reputations, while news consum-
ers feared for their sanity. Media lit-
eracy was thrust into the spotlight, as
educators and the general public alike
demanded more tools to address this
growing problem.
At the Newseum—a private, nonprofit
Washington, D.C., museum dedicated
to explaining and defending the First
Amendment—our mission has long led
us to tackle controversial topics through
the lens of the five freedoms: religion,
speech, press, assembly and petition.
With all eyes on the media, we’re deter-
mined to help build an understand-
ing of freedom of the press that goes
beyond pithy sound bites.
In our exhibits, programs and classes
for visiting students and adults, we
explore how freedom of the press is a
vital part of a democracy and depends
on media savvy and critical thinking. In
on-site and online activities, we prompt
our visitors to wrestle with what it
means that the First Amendment pro-
tects not only good journalism, but also
flawed or misleading attempts at news.
By digging into the decision-making
processes of journalists and teasing apart
their own interactions with news and
information, we make the case for why
freedom of the press must be protected—
even though it will always fall short of the
ideal—and why regulations or algorithms
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August/September 2017
Students learn how to sort real news stories from fake ones during the Newseum’s
“Fighting Fake News” classes.
are unlikely remedies for biased, incom-
plete or even false information.
We’ve been teaching media literacy for
two decades, but in response to the cur-
rent political climate, we have brought
these efforts to the fore and begun
experimenting with new approaches. We
launched a new class for visiting student
groups called “Fighting Fake News: How Avenue. We launched our “Media
Literacy Maven” video series to provide
a more informal, fun way to share new
media literacy strategies and fake news
examples with an online audience. And
two bright, bold infographics provide
tips for how to “E.S.C.A.P.E. Junk News”
and how to weigh whether a story is
share-worthy. Both are available at
to Outsmart Trolls and Troublemakers.”
In this interactive session, students get
inside the heads of fake news creators
and learn strategies for identifying false
information. To highlight the relevance
to real life, students use our laptops
and their own devices to go online and
immediately put what they’ve learned to
use in a timed “Real or Fake?” challenge.
In the pilot phase alone, we’ve taught
this class to over 1,750 students from
schools right here in D.C. and from as far
away as Alaska.
Our resources aren’t only for those
who can make the trip to Pennsylvania newseumed.org.
In addressing this vital issue, we know
the stakes are high. But we choose to see
this as a moment of opportunity to build
on the buzz and provide in-depth, non-
partisan content that is more important
and valuable to the public than ever
before. Some of the news out there may
be fake, but our commitment to empow-
ering news consumers is real.
Barbara McCormack is vice president
of education at the Newseum. The
organization offers free learning
resources, available at newseumed.org.