Deconstructing Fake News with MediaWise’s Heaven Taylor-Wynn

Remember when newspapers and 3 TV channels were the only ways you consumed the news? That world will never be a reality for our kids—and it’s up to us to teach them to think critically about where they’re getting information and who may be trying to feed it to them. And get excited, parents, because we have a killer partner in this effort: it’s called MediaWise, and it’s a media literacy project that aims to teach 1 million teens how to sort fact from fiction online by 2020. Jen talks to journalist and MediaWise member Heaven Taylor-Wynn, who schools us on ways we can teach our kids (and ourselves) how to sniff out fake news and gives us the skinny on some of the new scams we need to watch out for (anyone who’s seen the “deep fake” video of Ron Swanson on the opening credits of Full House knows what we’re talking about). We learn how keyword searches take the sensation out of crazy headlines and how “lateral reading” helps us give a more full context to a story. Heaven’s right when she says, “The information we consume directly affects the decisions we make.” And if we can equip our kids to navigate digital waters successfully, we’re setting them up to have healthy media diets and make well-informed choices for life.

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