Course Building

The full News Literacy course is taught to undergraduate students at Stony Brook University, and at many other institutes around the U.S. It is also taught in K-12 school settings and can be easily modified to fit into almost any course. The full course focuses on a few major objectives that students should be able to master:

  1. Analyze key elements of news reports -- weighing evidence, evaluating sources, noting context and transparency -- to judge their reliability.
  2. Distinguish between news reports, opinion journalism and unsupported bloviation.
  3. Identify and distinguish between news media bias and audience bias.
  4. Blend personal scholarship and course materials to write forcefully about journalism standards and practices, fairness and bias, First Amendment issues and their individual Fourth Estate rights and responsibilities.
  5. Use examples from each day’s news to demonstrate critical thinking and civic engagement.
  6. Place the impact of social media and digital technologies into their historical context.

One of our major goals is to see News Literacy implemented as full-fledged courses at the secondary and collegiate level, and integrated into core curricula throughout the country. Here's a wide range of resources from our partners and the Center for News Literacy to help in your quest to make News Literacy a crucial part of the education of your students.

 

Course Documents

Data sets