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" Why is it important to be critical consumers of news media? How do we discern fact from opinion in The New York Times, and in other news reports? In this lesson, students will become familiar with the layout of the NYTimes.com home page and learn how news and opinion articles are labeled and organized for clarity. Then students will carefully consider the difference between fact and opinion and create guiding questions to help discern between the two when reading a news or opinion piece from any news source."

"Facebook's News Feed, a homepage built by our friends and organized by our clicks and likes, isn't really a "news" feed. It's an entertainment portal for stories that remind us of our lives and offer something like an emotional popper. In fact, news readers self-identify as a minority on Facebook: Fewer than half ever read "news" on the site, according to a 2013 Pew study, and just 10 percent of them go to Facebook to get the news on purpose, as opposed, say, being assaulted by a breaking news event when you're just scanning baby photos. To see this more clearly, let's compare the BuzzFeed network's most viral stories-i.e.: the stories that go biggest on Facebook-to the top stories on Twitter and the most-searched stories. First, here are the top stories on Twitter in 2013. It's a blend of news, like terrorist attacks and music shows, and evergreen silliness with Ryan Gosling and Kim Kardashian. "

"Crime news got far greater play in the Times' and Strib's online editions, Maier and Tucker found, while their print editions "provided more front-page coverage of government, politics and education than did their online counterparts." Both gave more attention to sports online, and the Times had more business news online than in print, they found. Only by clicking into the depths of an online news site is an avid reader likely to find the same news stories featured online as on the front page of his or her local newspaper. These results have significant implications for the news industry and the reading public. "

"Gold and Phillip offered their insights on examples of rumors and misinformation in the 2016 campaign, discussed the competing issues and agendas they must navigate in their reporting, and chatted with students and educators about the active role young people can play as consumers and creators of news and information about political issues. The hangout was part of a special series on "Building News Literacy, Critical Media Skills, and Political Awareness Today" produced in connection to Letters to the Next President 2.0.  NLP NEWS Check out the News Literacy Project's latest developments. "

"A new comprehensive study, conducted by The Media Insight Project, shows that trust and reliability in news can be broken down into specific factors that publishers can put into action and consumers can recognize. The study also finds that in the digital age, several new factors largely unexamined before - such as the intrusiveness of ads, navigability, load times, and having the latest details - also are critical in determining whether consumers consider a publisher competent and worthy of trust. The specific factors that lead people to trust and rely on a news source also vary by topic, the study finds. How much consumers value a specific component related to trust depends, for instance, on whether they are seeking news about politics or traffic and weather, let alone lifestyle. On some topics, consumers rate in‑depth reporting and expert sources more highly. In others, ease of use is of higher value. For still others, being entertained is more important. And in social media, consumers are fairly skeptical of content and want cues of trustworthiness such as clear identification of the original reporting source."

"How much of our local news is propaganda? Stations are slipping sponsored "video news releases" - promotional segments designed to look like objective news reports - into their regular programming. And increasingly they're using these VNRs without identifying them as such. This deception is illegal under federal law and Federal Communications Commission rules. Presenting VNRs as actual news breaches the trust between local stations and their communities. By disguising advertisements as news, stations violate both the spirit and the letter of their broadcast licenses, which obligate them to use the airwaves to serve the public."

Facebook plans to migrate its Sponsored Stories ad platform into users' news feeds early next year, the company says. Introduced last January, Sponsored Stories - a new ad format integrating your Facebook friends' activities into small ads - began appearing in the column on the right side of the News Feed. Last month, the ads began appearing in the Ticker as well. Perhaps anticipating criticism for the latest migration of Sponsored Stories, a Facebook rep emphasized that the ads will be used sparingly. Most users, she says, will see the maximum of one ad per day in their News Feeds. The speed at which the ads cycle through the News Feed, meanwhile, will depend on various factors that Facebook hasn't yet determined, a Facebook rep says.

"Just before the holidays, late-night comedian Conan O'Brien poked a little fun at local TV newscasts. In doing so, he illustrated some serious issues about the compromises journalists make in understaffed newsrooms. O'Brien has aired similar montages in the past, capturing repetition in local stories about such topics as Cyber Monday shopping, restaurants that serve political-themed food, and the news that actor Mike Myers and his wife were expecting a baby. The compilations are popular fodder for Internet discussions, where viewers attributed the homogeneity to "consumerist propaganda," "controlled brainwashing," and "corporations spitting out prefabricated copies of fake news." The truth is less conspiratorial. Each story O'Brien featured was supplied by a syndication service that distributes scripts, video clips, and fully-produced news packages to local stations. The self gifting story came from CNN Newsource, which claims 800 affiliates. (CNN is part of Time Warner, which also owns the TBS cable channel that airs "Conan.") You're almost certainly watching syndicated content when your local newscast shows video of national or international stories. Stations also rely on Newsource for sports highlights, business and consumer reports, entertainment news, and stories CNN categorizes as "Caught on Camera," "Animals," "Kickers," and "Easy to Tease.""

"How did misinformation spread during the 2016 presidential election and has anything changed since? A new study of more than 10 million tweets from 700,000 Twitter accounts that linked to more than 600 misinformation and conspiracy news outlets answers this question. The report reveals a concentrated "fake news" ecosystem, linking more than 6.6 million tweets to fake news and conspiracy news publishers in the month before the 2016 election. The problem persisted in the aftermath of the election with 4 million tweets to fake and conspiracy news publishers found from mid-March to mid-April 2017. A large majority of these accounts are still active today. Here are eight findings that stood out to us:"

"THE media critic Jack Shafer wrote recently that, in the age of Twitter, the public had better get used to a new fact of life: News stories, especially the early reports of breaking news events, are very likely to be inaccurate. To this, I offer a radical response: That's not good enough. Or maybe it's good enough for some news organizations and some news consumers.  Are mistakes like this inevitable in the hypercompetitive age of social media?

"This summer The Onion ran a satirical piece purporting to be an op-ed by CNN's managing editor, Meredith Artley, titled, "Let Me Explain Why Miley Cyrus' VMA Performance Was Our Top Story This Morning." Her explanation for why CNN filled the top news slot with the story "Miley Cyrus Did What???" (this was the actual headline; no need to satirize it) instead of reporting on Syria or the unrest in Egypt: "It was an attempt to get you to click on CNN.com so that we could drive up our web traffic, which in turn would allow us to increase our advertising revenue." According to Thomas E. Patterson's new book "Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism" (Vintage, 233 pages, $15), this kind of thinking is alas, not fiction, but the sort of logic that drives much of mainstream journalism today."

"Don't like the media? Think it's all "lies" or "fake"? Then you're probably not as good at reading the news as your less perpetually annoyed peers. That's one finding from a new study from the News Co/Lab at Arizona State, in collaboration with the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas. Those who have negative opinions of the news media are less likely to spot a fake headline, less likely to differentiate between news and opinion - but more confident in their ability to find the information they need online."

"Fake news videos aren't new, but they are on the rise and more realistic than ever due to technological advances. What used to be a fairly big production and cost thousands of dollars can now be achieved with a selfie stick and a smartphone. That may not sound like a big deal, but when politics, propaganda and bad intentions enter the fray, the potential to cause harm is staggering and potentially irreparable.   ASU Now spoke to Dan Gillmor and Eric Newton , who launched News Co/Lab in October, a collaborative lab inside the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication that aims to help the public find new ways of understanding and engaging with news and information. They believe fake videos soon will be "trivially easy, inexpensive, and all too believable.""

"Fake news is nothing new. Despite its rise to fame thanks to the 2016 presidential election, the phenomenon has been around since humans have been able to relay information - from spoken word to the first newspapers and now, to social media. It's also nothing to be afraid of. When armed with the right tools and information, anyone can spot fake news from a mile away. NewseumEd offers free classes and resources on media literacy.  But if you're in a hurry, here's a quick guide to identifying fake news. "

"News of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., has been circulating on social media as news outlets try to find out more details. Here's a snapshot of how the information has played out so far." A sampling of how the news spread via social media through the use of Storify.

"It started with a post on social media. Or, to be more exact, a series of posts about a visit to McDonald's to buy a milkshake. Within hours, Josh Raby's gripping account on Twitter was international news, covered by respected outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. "This guy's story about trying to buy a McDonald's milkshake turned into a bit of a mission and the internet can't get enough of it," read the headline on Indy100, the Independent's sister title. The New York Daily News said he'd been "tortured". Except, as McDonald's pointed out - and Raby himself later admitted - the story was embellished to entertain his Twitter followers, although he says he based it on real events. Raby's was the latest thinly sourced story that, on closer inspection, turned out not to be as billed. The phenomenon is largely a product of the increasing pressure in newsrooms that have had their resources slashed, then been recalibrated to care more about traffic figures. And, beyond professional journalists, there is also a "whole cottage industry of people who put out fake news", says Brooke Binkowski, an editor at debunking website Snopes. "They profit from it quite a lot in advertising when people start sharing the stories. They are often protected because they call themselves 'satire' or say in tiny fine print that they are for entertainment purposes only.""

""News media literacy" isn't just about being able to read and understand the news; the term also refers to the ability to analyze the news for reliability and accuracy and distinguish between fact, opinions and assertions. This task - for the journalist and the citizen in a democratic society - grows increasingly difficult in the digital age as the number of news generators proliferates and the process of creating content becomes less uniform."

Video News Releases are short broadcast news reports that appear in some news programs as part of the news, but are really created by sponsors or special interest groups. Click on the links below to read more about each VNR, including the client(s) that funded it, the TV stations that aired it, and the techniques that each station used to incorporate the VNR into its newscast.

What's the first word that should come to mind when you or your students see a news story or get a news/rumor text?  We think it should be a skeptical "REALLY?" To reinforce the importance of becoming an educated news consumer, RTNDF is launching a news literacy project called REALLY? The campaign is designed to help everyone -- students, teachers, professionals and the general public -- separate fact from fiction. You will want to your student producers and editors to join you for this webinar - or see the archived version.