Media literacy now a must to sift out brutal truths

Opinion

The woman on the Zoom call is crying. “We have to stop him, this is really happening!” she says.

She’s joining the call from Los Angeles. She’s a teacher, like all of us in the meeting, and we’ve gathered to discuss Media Literacy and the state of democracy.

The teacher is referring to U.S. President Donald Trump and the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids ongoing in America, and the impact it’s all having on her students.

A teacher from Texas joins in. “They’re actively removing books from my school library,” he says. “We’re not allowed to purchase new books. We’re not allowed to choose them.”

This was not what I expected on the call with the Media Education Lab, and it’s alarming. I think many of us knew this was the state of things in the U.S., but hearing first-hand the impacts on education on the front lines and the widespread resistance to it throws a more intimate light on the reality of the political upheaval we’re living through.

In my work on the recently announced Free Press media literacy platform, I’ve been surveying trends and issues near and far to develop the best possible picture of what’s needed in Manitoba.

The Media Education Lab is just one port of call. We’re reaching out to educators here at home, and to other news organizations who share our desire to connect to community and defend democracy. The picture is stark.

This week, the New York Times reported on the proliferation of fake and misappropriated images and videos purporting to be coming from the ICE protests in California. While real L.A. citizens choke back tears on a Zoom call and work to calm the children in their communities, nefarious agitators online were posting photos of pallets of bricks, claiming they were being delivered to fuel the protests, when they were in fact photographs from the product catalogue for a brick manufacturer in Malaysia.

This will get worse. The hot spots of political unrest and clouding of the truths emerging from them will only continue on, and we will all need sharper skills to avoid falling into the traps of misinformation laid for us.

Fully two years before the fateful 2016 election, Finland was training its children to recognize misinformation and contributing to the resilience of Finnish democracy. When Finland overhauled its best-in-class education system to greater emphasize critical thinking and combat outside threats to democracy, a spokesperson for the prime minister declared, “the first line of defence is the kindergarten teacher.”

Unless we’re actively equipping ourselves and the next generation to hold the line, we are likely to be awash in indecipherable lies and malicious misinformation in short order.

In Canada, our national centre for media literacy, MediaSmarts, works tirelessly to carry out research and develop the materials needed to ensure we can access the same types of resources. They’ve been leading the charge since the 1990s, aware that a shifting media landscape brings mutated views of reality.

We’re all cousins at this point in history. On video calls from across the continent, in universities, Finnish kindergartens, national think tanks, Manitoba classrooms and in the Free Press newsroom, we’re strategizing for strength and change.

I’m in awe of the collaboration now underway involving the Manitoba department of education, the Free Press and the Winnipeg School Division to make the media literacy platform succeed. I’m stunned that this level of cross-sector teamwork is still possible, considering the hail of skepticism raining down on media and educators at all times.

The war-like terminology we use to illustrate the seriousness of the times we’re living in — hold the line, combat misinformation, resist tyranny, defend democracy — are heeded here at the Free Press, along with a broader community of educators, researchers and institutions all pulling in the same direction.

What we’ve seen coming out of L.A. this week is some of the work of others in defending their neighbours and protecting their way of life. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has declared the actions of Trump in her city to be a needless provocation, and those demonstrating peacefully are, like us, pulling together across identities toward a future unobscured by tyranny and lies.

One day soon, here in Manitoba, teachers will be able to explore the new media literacy platform. In that future, the Free Press will be standing on the front lines with them, not just to defend democracy as we always have, but to encourage and celebrate the next generation of freedom fighters.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca