Navigating News Literacy: A Conversation with Miriam Romais

Elana Leoni:

Hello and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week I sit down with educators, ed tech entrepreneurs, and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing or content marketing, and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience. And now, let's jump right into today's episode.

Welcome everyone to this week's episode. This week I sat down with Miriam Romais. She's the director of NewsLitNation at the News Literacy Project. She's also a documentary photographer, a nonprofit leader, and an all around misinformation superfighter. I love that. She sat down with me to talk about all things news literacy. And right now, I can't think of a more timely and important topic, especially as elections ramp up in the US.

During our chat, Miriam takes some time to define what news literacy is and isn't, by highlighting some misconceptions around its meaning. She also shares some of the challenges facing educators and students when it comes to discerning credible news sources from misinformation. If you are an educator, this episode is not to be missed as she shares how you can prioritize and integrate news literacy into your curricula. Whatever subject you teach. Doesn't have to just be social study. All right. Well enjoy this timely and important conversation.

Welcome to the show, Miriam. I'm so excited to have you on All Things Marketing and Education. I'm so excited to learn from you. I have had the pleasure of collaborating with you, not as much as my teammate Porter has when we have helped you in the past building community, but I have enjoyed you as a human and I'm excited to have a conversation with you.

Miriam Romais:

I love that and I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

Elana Leoni:

Yay. Well, let's get into it. I know you work for a fabulous organization, the News Literacy Project. I want to dive right into the fact of news literacy and the importance of it. And really, what the heck is it? What is it not? So why don't we start, really, in news literacy? What is it and why is it so important today?

Miriam Romais:

Right. So probably a lot of teachers are going, oh my gosh, please tell me. So we define news literacy as the ability to determine the credibility of news and other information and recognize the standards of fact-based journalism, because we need to know what to trust and share and what are we acting on, what are decisions based on? And I think a lot of people are more familiar with a broader term. Media literacy, digital literacy, information literacy, which is a lot about how to access, analyze, and create. But it encompasses all forms of communication.

We focus on just the news and information related to that. So we feel it's important for people to know that fact-based journalism has standards because that's how we know what to trust. We base our decisions on that. What we read and what we see. It's the thing that helps people have a healthy skepticism about what they consume, and it nurtures a curiosity without becoming cynical about all things that are news-related, right?

Elana Leoni:

Yeah.

Miriam Romais:

So our nonpartisan organization focuses specifically in that aspect.

Elana Leoni:

You talked a little bit about what news literacy is. Let's talk a little bit about its importance in K-12 education, in particular, and maybe in society as a whole. Because when we saw, I felt like as a person, it never became more important until these big peaks of elections come in, and you start seeing all this fake news and people propagating the term fake news in multiple fashions. So why don't you talk to me a little bit about the rise or... Because it's really fascinating you're behind a nonprofit organization that's really trying to teach it and empower it within K-12 schools, but you probably get to see behind the scenes the ebbs and flows and the trends around it, too.

Miriam Romais:

Yeah, absolutely. And the News Literacy Project is also 15 years old, so this is not something that arose because of the rise of misinformation. So we do have a lot of history behind this, but I think some of the misconceptions people have about what is news literacy and also address the term fake news.

So we are so fortunate. We have an organization that has been in existence for 15 years, heading towards 16. So luckily, we have a broad support of people that support our work that are from all sorts of walks of life, diverse, ideological, and political backgrounds. But some people might have misconceptions about what the goal of news literacy is. So again, it's like that building that healthy skepticism and nurturing the curiosity about what you read, but without becoming cynical about it.

So, credible journalism is concerned about facts and the truth, and it tries to be fair and transparent. So it is built, literally to inform people about what's happening in the world and their community. And we're going to be talking a lot about community, so about their community. It's not designed to convince of people or something or influence them. But as educators, they're dealing with students that are continuously being influenced by what they see and read. But since we focus on the news, that helps counteract that a little bit.

Elana Leoni:

So what I'm hearing you say is that sometimes some of the misconceptions could be, well, it starts getting into this weird political world, and there might be biases and there might be like... There's a lot of sensitivity out there, especially in K-12 schools, depending on the state you're in about, all right, maybe they're trying to influence them one way or the other. And really what you're saying is, the heart of news literacy, is this a credible source and has this been validated? And sure, you can have credible sources that are validated that still have present a biased picture, but you're just saying, "Hey, does this make the cut?" And you're nonpartisan true and true. Is that what I was hearing you say?

Miriam Romais:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. Because we're teaching people how to think. Here are the skills so you can figure out how to know how to know, what to think. So we focus on the skills. So it doesn't matter if, politically, what area of the spectrum you are, our focus is how do you fact check? I can talk about a couple of tips that we use and we share. A lot of our resources... Which are all free, by the way, educators. A lot of our resources dive into that a little bit more. And I know that educators are sometimes worried about how do you tackle.

We have a lesson in Checkology, our virtual classroom program about understanding bias. We have another one, harm and distrust, which focuses specifically on communities that have been hurt by certain types of media and outlets, news outlets. So again, it comes back to what are the standards of the news organization you're looking at? And Checkology, the cool thing about it, I think also if teachers are worried about a controversial topic, is we have letters on our platform that teachers can send home with their students to say, this is what this lesson is about and this is why it's important from a nonpartisan perspective.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. And I think while you were talking, I was reflecting on, and you've been in education for quite a while too, but when I started my career in K-12 kind of media education at Edutopia, there was this belief that there's a lot of information out there on the internet. And we always wanted to encourage our educators to go beyond, create a lesson plan that's not Google-able, right? But what we didn't anticipate is this on-front of so many resources, this Web's 3.0 world where you have to effectively curate the best resources, the most valid resources. And that's a skill in itself.

Because George Lucas used to always say, let's teach beyond Google. Let's teach beyond the search engine engine and let's embrace the technology, especially with AI and all these things coming on. But there's this beautiful foundational skill that you have to actually assess those resources about make sure what's valid, what sources are they citing, and am I, as a curator of resources trying to figure out what's true and not, how do I aggregate the right sources that tell all the vantage points. So there's this just, I guess I was just putting it in my head. I'm like, it's now a lot more complicated.

Miriam Romais:

It is. It really is more complicated because the speed of change of technology and the information that is shoved in your face is constantly changing. The speed of technology affects our lives in so many different ways, we barely understand it. Sometimes it's handy to have a teenager at home, but the truth is social media platforms are a primary method of sharing that information. And educators are always grappling like, okay, what's the latest tech? Oh my God. I have one more thing to figure out. Really?

Elana Leoni:

And if I may here, Miriam, I'm sorry to interrupt, but one of the bigger questions I have is there's so many things that are important in teaching now. There's financial literacy, there's coding, there's all these really cool things that don't necessarily fit into the core curricula. And so, educators listening to this podcast might be going, gosh, I really think it's important. I don't know how to integrate it into my math or my social studies or my English. Do you have any thoughts on where they even begin? I think that everyone can agree that it's a fundamental skill that we need to teach, and ultimately, we need to assess because we treasure what we measure and if we don't hold ourselves accountable around that stuff. But how do they get even beginning to get started when it doesn't necessarily make a direct correlation to their standards and learning objectives that they absolutely have to teach within their subject?

Miriam Romais:

Right And I think that's a key place where News Literacy Project can come in because there's a lot of, I don't know how to start resources, news literacy. There's this thought that news literacy has to be its own course. But the reality is, there are news literacy lessons in every single thing we do. So sprinkle it in into your science classes, into math. Because algorithms, it's important for students to know how that data is aggregated and how it influences them. So it's more than just social studies classes or, even art classes. I have an art background, too.

So it's like, yes, I see connections in there. So there are opportunities for critical thinking throughout, because we all need to figure out, okay, is this source true? But how do we verify it? How do we create stuff that relates to this, and how do we use that? And what we specialize in is removing some of that work from the teachers. Because trying to learn it, trying to figure out. It's like here we go, we're nonpartisan. Here is something that so many of our resources are plug and play. Checkology virtual classroom, we have so many lessons that can apply to various subject matters that you might be teaching. Art, science, math, ELA, social studies.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. When you're saying science, I was like, sometimes you don't make a natural correlation to science, but there's a lot of information to debunk and misinformation happening in the world of science right now. And when you have students, they are really just trying to make sense of the world. And a lot of the times, depending on how they grow up and what age they are, you take things as truth until you give them that freedom or that empowerment to say, "Well, you heard this. How do you verify that?" And I think that's such a beautiful skill, and I honestly think, and I know that's the reason why you are devoting so much time of your career to the News Literacy Project because you fundamentally believe it can change society. And I believe that, too.

Miriam Romais:

Absolutely. Creating that movement. How do we create this environment where people are not falling for misinformation left and right? And I think there's a little bit of, there's a school of thought that, oh, these are digital natives. They know what to do. No, they know how to use their iPad and their phone, and sometimes we need them to teach us this, but it doesn't mean that they're not digitally naive. The challenge is, like you said, a lot of students might believe everything they see. But they get to a certain age, and then, we need to teach them how to not be cynical about everything they're reading are seeing in memes and in news. Can they discern, is it news or is it actually an opinion? A commentary is opinion that might be... Its purpose is to kind of influence somebody's thought, right? Which is different than something that is news related.

Elana Leoni:

Yes. And for those of you listeners that are like, Checkology. And all these resources, we will put all of these resources in the show notes. And like Miriam said, the News Literacy Project is a hundred percent free. It may require a sign-in here and there, but the resources are great. And I love how they tackle different subjects within the core curricula, too. And with RumorGuard and things like that, you can have things that just integrate in your day-to-day and it's based on real life current events too. That could be science related, could be English related. Who knows?

I had a podcast with Jose Vilson, and I'll put him in the show notes as well, but he said, I teach math. But it doesn't mean that it's not an active place or an opportunity to actually teach social justice. My kids look to me to teach certain things, and they ask me questions, and it's my job to really fulfill that need, but also integrate it in with what we're talking about to engage their curiosity. And that's where I see news literacy being that magic. Like, okay, you have these questions. Let's empower you.

Miriam Romais:

Right. Finding what the students are passionate about. If somebody is really into sports, for example, some of our resources have to do with what kind of misinformation is floating around about that. We have some resources that might explore... All right, I'm going to talk about the SIFT© for a second. It is our weekly newsletter, and it discusses specifically trends and issues in social media, misinformation, AI, journalism, relates to press freedoms, but we focus on current events that came up in the news from the week before. So it's timely, and we show examples of how to debunk it, how you might use it in the classroom. So that is pretty handy for... Again, our job is like, how can we make your job easier? Because teachers, you have so much on your plates.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. I was just saying that in my head is that if I were an educator and I felt passionate about it, I'd have to look around the internet, look at what was trending, look at some examples that were fake news and look for some teaching moments. But you do that all for them.

Miriam Romais:

Right. How much time would that take you between grading, between submitting reports, between all of that? So we compile everything. We have a web page specifically about addressing AI because everybody's like, that's the latest worry in education. Your students are using it regardless of whether you're allowing that in your classrooms. So let's figure out how to harness that technology and again, teach students the skill.

It won't matter what platform they're trying to use, what social media platform, because the core skills are teach them search strategies, teaching about lateral reading, teaching them to recognize what are the emotional red flags. Like you mentioned elections coming up. There is a lot of information floating around that might not be true. It creates polarization and conflict. So how do we avoid that? We have resources specifically that address that to help teachers navigate it.

Elana Leoni:

Yes, I love all of it. And ultimately, with all of, when we talk about debating what the role of K-12 education is and education as a whole is, I ultimately think what we're trying to do is create critical thinkers. It comes down to really that, sure, you can say we want them to be successful citizens that contribute to society. We want them to be emotionally intelligent human beings, but a foundational thing. I don't want them to be lemmings. I want them to be critical thinkers to make sure that life doesn't swallow them up and then 20 years down the road they're like, oh, we should have said something.

Miriam Romais:

Oh God. Yeah, totally.

Elana Leoni:

So we talked a little bit about the power of news literacy. We'll put a lot of your resources on how to integrate it in specific subject level curricula in the show notes. But another audience listening here are ed tech professionals. And I'm wondering for them, gosh, how did they help bolster this? Because a lot of them truly believe in critical thinking and all of the seas of contributing to the future of education.

When you think about ed tech products out there, is there an opportunity for them to, I don't know, integrate or... There's certainly like Newsela and certain things like that, but have you seen anything or anything you want to say to when thinking about the ed tech audience as it relates to news literacy? I think there's something there there. I just wanted to throw that out to you.

Miriam Romais:

Yeah, sure. Well, again, no matter what the platform is, what are the skills to discern what is fact? What are the skills that you can use to figure out information? And whether it's Newsela. There's a lot of organizations out there, like NAMLE, that are doing really good work related. So I think for educators, finding creative ways to have students research and find topics that pique their interest is a key launching point for the critical thinking. You were talking about learning how to vet articles and posts, and oh, by the way, meme isn't news and all these other things.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. No, I love that. Because when we think about the technology, I'm wondering, sure, a lot of our ed tech is trying to move consumer base where you talked about, sure, they might be digital natives, but they don't actually know how to create. So it's moving from consumption to creation-

Miriam Romais:

Creation-

Elana Leoni:

But how do you create in a mindful way that's rooted in critical thinking and maybe has vetted sources? And we even think about jumping into a platform like Canva and we're creating memes. Where's the validity of that? Where did it come from? Where's the source on that? So I could see them tapping into sources and just thinking about that connection of what ultimately do we want? If you're an ed tech company, a lot of the times you start out saying, here's ultimately what I want to move the needle on, but how do I backtrack and is there opportunities to link to things that can create more of a powerful end product and help the learning outcomes for students, too?

Miriam Romais:

Right. And I think of, regardless of what the ed tech company is, one example is thinking about not the thing itself, but how can you engage the students in it? So an example that comes to mind is my colleague Erin Olson. She is a former middle school and high school ELA teacher. She was also an instructional coach, and she works at NLP. She's a senior manager of partnerships, blah, blah, blah. In her first week of class, she asked students to Google her, Google her name. And I understand that the whole thought of that might send a lot of teachers running screaming. But the idea of it, if you think about the application of it, the idea is to find out firsthand how they research information and do they believe what they found?

And whether it's you use yourself or apply that same idea, but have the student pick somebody that they're interested in. Whether it's a celebrity, a sports person, Taylor Swift, which we actually do have some resources about, that is less important than the act of how do we engage our students in the process of becoming critical thinkers. And they might not even realize that that's what they're doing. It's kind of like disguising vegetables in their meal.

There's another example, I think. We have a Checkology lesson called Power in Art. I mentioned I have an art background, so this really is close to my heart, but Power in Art is about the watchdog role of journalism. But related to editorial cartooning. It's a form of opinion journalism. So, you can go through the lesson with your students, but then encourage them to create their own cartoon, their own graphic novel about an issue that they're really passionate about. So you take whatever ed tech thing is happening, but then have them apply it to their own lives, what is important to them? And that is where the critical thinking really starts blossoming and thriving because they're invested. They have ownership in that thought process.

Elana Leoni:

I love that. Because it's this beautiful circle of, in the beginning, there are assumptions and biases and behaviors they don't even realize, and you're forcing them to slow down and have a little bit of metacognition and say, "How do I think? What are my biases?" And then break that down and then use that as almost like a superpower. And then say, what do I believe in, a little bit of self-identity, like you're saying, to connect the dots. That's beautiful.

Miriam Romais:

Right. Connect the dots. And we have so many things that do that. We have a lot of infographics on our website. Okay, so one of the things that if there's any educator out there trying to figure out how to get their students to cite a source and verify information and vet it, we have an infographic about teaching students how to search like a pro. So it's really easy. Here are eight tips that are, it's digestible, because depending on the age of the student... And if we're talking about K through 12, we know that their brains aren't fully developed yet, that misinformation thrives on emotion, which is why they're so susceptible to it. So it takes a really concerted effort to teach critical thinking because of that. So can we infuse these tips?

How do you search like a pro if you're going to need that in your science class, how do you find out scientifically, if this will work, is it repeatable? Is it verifiable? And teaching skills like lateral reading, we call it lateral reading because online, right? Everything's online now. You read from top to bottom that one thing, top to bottom. So literally reading, figure, take that topic, open up a new tab and bring up multiple sources. So it's almost like reading it like a book, literally, so that you can figure out, okay, eventually you will find information that either confirms that something might be fact or not, or it's been debunked, like this science claim at the beginning of the pandemic, like, oh, go microwave your mask. No, that didn't quite work. So there's a lot of things. There's a science lesson, too.

Elana Leoni:

I missed that one. That's funny.

Miriam Romais:

Oh, yeah. So encouraging these search strategies, no matter what subject matter you teach, and making sure that you're aware of those emotional red flags. If it's making you something... Like if students are really angry about something, well, of course, because they're leading with their emotions, but let's take a pause and look at, okay, it might be trying to influence you if it's appealing that much to your emotions, which means it's not news, basically.

Elana Leoni:

Well, thank you for some of those tips, Miriam. I know we could talk all day about news literacy. I'm going to follow up with you to make sure that all of your helpful free resources from the News Literacy Project are in our show notes. And at the end of this episode, we will talk to you and give you that URL so those of you on the go don't have to worry about taking notes.

One question I'd love to end this podcast with is about you being a human being and so much in education we are selfless and we devote ourselves and our hearts and our passions to helping students learn and helping teachers and all of the things that surround us and tug at our heartstrings within education.

I'd love to ask you, as a human being who is curious and learns and gets excited about things, what are some things that maybe that you've read or one thing that you've read or watched recently that's inspired you? I want to make sure that people can walk away from this podcast, too, and we don't always talk about education. We have other things that can continuously, I don't know, make them thrive as a human as well.

Miriam Romais:

I love that. I love that so much. So this isn't something that I read or watched, but this just happened and is so fresh in my mind because it directly relates to educators and the importance of what they do. And it also brings it back to community, which is what our NewsLitNation Community at NLP is about too.

So last weekend I was talking to my mom, and I am not going to say how old she is because she would really hate me for that. She says she's still thirty-eight. I was talking to my mom, and when we... I grew up in Brazil, and when we lived there, she became a teacher. She was teaching English, and she developed an entire curriculum about how do you teach English to young people, which eventually got adopted regionally and then by the state, et cetera. So she had a great career as a teacher for several years.

So this is a long time ago, not to date myself, but this is a long time ago. She told me this story this past weekend, so it's really fresh in my mind that a few years ago, she was in São Paulo, Brazil, which is one of the largest cities in the world. A, we've never lived in São Paulo, we don't know anybody there except for family maybe here and there, some distant cousins. She was in São Paulo in a restaurant having a nice evening meal with my stepdad. And all of a sudden the maitre d' walks up to her and hands her the phone saying, "Are you Ms. Palladini?" And she's like, "Well, yeah, but nobody knows I'm here. Why do I have a phone call?" She answers the phone, and it ends up that it was someone that lives in Argentina. Also, not from São Paolo, lives in Argentina, who said, "You looked so familiar, and I needed to find out if you were Mrs. Palladini because you were my teacher 40 years ago."

And I know. I get little teary-eyed thinking about the power of, we make such an impact in our students' lives that we might not realize it until years later. And as a teacher, like, oh my gosh, the feels that surround that. This woman called 40, forty-five years later, remembered the impact that that teacher had in her life. And this is why community is so important. This is why what we're trying to build a NewsLitNation to give educators that strength and support that we need so that we have these experiences years later that we resonate, that we have a legacy that we're leaving. Because that's what we want to do, we want to encourage and have our students blossom.

Elana Leoni:

Yes. And I think that that story is, it's so powerful. And what I love about it is that every educator that's listening, and anybody in ed tech listening, has a story somewhat like that of they can ultimately, immediately, it's a natural, oh, I would do that if I saw so-and-so at a restaurant and that profession, you can't replicate. There isn't any other thing that makes you want to do that, that had that power to shape so many minds in such powerful ways.

Miriam Romais:

Exactly. And you're shaping minds that are going to go into all sorts of walks of life. The impact that you have is incredible.

Elana Leoni:

Well, thank you for sharing that story, Miriam, and thanks for talking a little bit more about what news literacy is, what it isn't, and how you can begin to integrate it thoughtfully into core curricula, beyond just social studies or history. There's a ton of opportunity.

Miriam Romais:

Certainly.

Elana Leoni:

I think we can all agree the importance of it too. And I just want to thank you for what you and the News Literacy Project do for K-12 education. So we will put all of your contact information and resources in the show notes. And thank you so much for being a guest on all things marketing and education.

Miriam Romais:

It was a pleasure. Thank you so much. It was great to be here.