Commentary: The Problematic Rise of ‘Media Literacy Education’

by Ben Weingarten

New Jersey is enlisting public-school teachers and librarians to show children how to combat what it calls the grave threat of disinformation.

“Our democracy remains under sustained attack through the proliferation of disinformation,” Gov. Phil Murphy said in signing the nation’s first law mandating “information literacy” instruction for all K-12 students. The law, which aims to provide students with the “critical thinking” skills necessary to differentiate between “facts, points of view, and opinions” will, Murphy proclaimed, ensure “that our kids … possess the skills needed to discern fact from fiction.”

At a time when the nation’s political and thought leaders are wrestling over the meaning of facts and truth, and distinctions between disinformation, misinformation and plain old information, the New Jersey bill is part of a growing effort to have teachers tell students how to settle these questions.

Since 2016, ten states controlled by Democratic legislators, and three run by Republicans, have passed “media literacy” laws.

Demand for media literacy education has seemingly grown in the “fake news” age, buoying bills like New Jersey’s, which had languished for years, only to pass with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Media literacy advocates such as Erin McNeill, President of Media Literacy Now, say the goal is to teach students “how to consume information, not what information to consume.”

But other educational experts see information and media literacy as inherently political, or minimally ripe for politicization.

The “guise of ‘media literacy,’” writes John Sailer, a senior fellow at the National Association of Scholars, “often functions as a trojan horse, casting certain political views” – conservative ones, say critics – “as prima facie wrong and biased.”

The progressive politics of those backing information and media literacy bills in some states give skeptics further pause – concerns heightened by rhetoric like that of Gov. Murphy, who framed New Jersey’s bill as responsive to the “violent insurrection” of Jan. 6, 2021.

Joshua Aikens, a Republican candidate for the New Jersey assembly and former chairman of AriseNJ, an advocacy group focused on electing school board members, told RCI he believes the bill will “be politically weaponized” to target “young impressionable minds.”

Republicans in Delaware and Illinois largely opposed media literacy bills that passed in their states on similar grounds.

Still others question the policy push on its merits. Robert Pondiscio, a former public-school teacher who is a senior fellow at the center-right American Enterprise Institute, sees media literacy as one of many “tips and tricks” educators tout that skirts a more fundamental issue: Children suffer from a “base-knowledge problem,” lacking command of rudimentary facts necessary to analyze content.

One long-time New Jersey public-school teacher, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said of the state’s bill: “Media literacy? There is no reading literacy in 80 percent of urban schools.”

Nevertheless, at least seven states Red and Blue are currently considering media literacy legislation aimed at children. Such efforts are occurring as Democratic Senators – sometimes joined by their Republican colleagues – work to include media literacy in proposed federal laws. The Biden administration has embedded media literacy not only in proposed education regulations, but codified it in national security policy, arguing that disinformation threatens the homeland.

“If the U.S. military has recognized the importance of improving media literacy training,” McNeill, a veteran, told RCI, “it makes sense to ensure our children are developing these skills as well.”

The emphasis on media literacy has grown alongside a burgeoning counter-disinformation industry, illustrated by the “Twitter Files,” linking the national security apparatus to Big Tech, corporate media, and related watchdogs. Critics on both the left and right are casting this as evidence of a growing “censorship-industrial complex” – one ironically fueled by claims of Trump-Russia collusion that proved false, and key COVID-19 claims cast as false but ultimately rendered true.

The press release announcing the passage of New Jersey’s law notes that the legislation builds on state counter-disinformation efforts, including its homeland security agency’s 2022 launch of a “disinformation portal,” which aims “to assist the public in identifying and vetting…truth-obscuring, manufactured information.”

This framing further alarms information and media literacy skeptics. Stanley Kurtz, education expert at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, says that “media literacy … embodies the leftist view of so-called disinformation,” treating “even the most respectable conservative bloggers and podcasters” as illegitimate.

“A pernicious proposal to set up a ‘government disinformation board’” – a reference to the Biden administration’s attempt to create a counter-disinformation body within DHS last year – “may have been shot down at the federal level,” Kurtz told RCI. “[B]ut the state of New Jersey … has just injected something like a government disinformation board into its own schools. Other states, be warned.”

‘Media Literacy Is Social Justice’

The information and media literacy movement has been around for decades. Earlier bills, passed by then-wholly or partly-Republican-controlled states such as Ohio (2009), Florida (2013) and Utah (2015), like newer incarnations, contain largely neutral and anodyne language. Predating fears over disinformation, media literacy was often baked into broader efforts aimed at equipping students to be competent “digital citizens” capable of making “smart media and online choices” in a social media-dominated world – as Utah legislators put it. Progressive-tied groups have long supported these efforts, but any such tinge to them was perhaps less apparent.

Two of the most prominent media literacy advocacy groups, suggested in part by their roles as sole named endorsers of recent federal media literacy legislation, are the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), and its partner, McNeill’s Media Literacy Now.

Founded in 1997, NAMLE bills itself as the nation’s “leading voice, convener, and resource for media literacy education.” The umbrella group now comprises 6,500 members and 82 organizational partners. It publishes an academic journal and hosts various media literacy conferences.

NAMLE defines media literacy – like state and federal authorities – innocuously, as “the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication.”

Resources on its site suggest media literacy education compels students to ask basic questions about the nature and intent of the content they encounter, and the motives of its producers. The aim is to “empower people to be critical thinkers and makers, effective communicators, and active citizens” – goals universally favored by those interviewed in connection with this story.

The group stresses that media literacy education is “not partisan.”

But, warns Kurtz, “the education left excels at lending a bipartisan sheen to what are in fact deeply politicized programs and proposals.”

Perhaps illustrating this point, the organization’s more recent activities and recommended resources suggest a growing progressive push.

NAMLE’s 2022 U.S. Media Literacy Week conference concluded with a day dedicated to “acting” – the “culmination of media literacy.” The organization recommended one could act by promoting “positive change by supporting social justice issues.”

This is consistent with NAMLE’s 2021 annual conference, which the group devoted to media literacy and social justice. In a note explaining why it chose that theme, the group said that, “Media literacy has many connections with social justice; in fact, many would say that media literacy is social justice.”

Sailer reported that “critical media literacy” – a pedagogy with Marxist roots akin to critical race theory – suffused some 17 presentations during the conference.

As NAMLE summarized it, by revealing the powers behind media messages and stereotypes within them, and “the effects that propaganda and mis/dis-information have on our politics and how they perpetuate injustices against marginalized groups, the environment, and our sociopolitical climate,” media literacy “helps us to understand issues of systemic inequity … while also inspiring action, critical change.”

Woke-Leaning ‘Critical Media Literacy’

The group’s conferences dating back to at least 2015 have included breakout sessions featuring topics like