News Literacy
Our first task working with clients to define and build their brands is to gather as much factual information as we can about the company, its target audience, its history, its core competencies and its competition. We mine a variety of resources. In addition to client interviews, we gather information from their customers, their employees, company records, current and past marketing materials, the media, industry and trade resources. This is fact gathering so that we can understand what the client’s core competencies are and how they connect emotionally to their customers. It’s not marketing. That comes later. We want an accurate picture so that we can help the client establish a bona-fide advantage over their competitors.
With this in mind, it’s just as important to gather the real facts on which to base life’s decisions. We are constantly being bombarded with information. In the last five years the flood of information is unprecedented in our history. It is mostly due to our ability to deliver news and other information digitally. With all of this information, it’s tough to choose what’s right or wrong, what’s fact or fiction.
Just think about the number of times all of us glance at our phones when new information that pops up.
This week, the week of January 27, has been declared National News Literacy Week by the News Literacy Project.
The News Literacy Project, is a nonpartisan national education nonprofit. According to their mission statement, it “Provides programs and resources for educators and the public to teach, learn and share the abilities needed to be smart, active consumers of news and information and equal and engaged participants in a democracy. https://newslit.org/
“News literacy is the ability to determine the credibility of news and other content, to identify different types of information, and to use the standards of authoritative, fact-based journalism to determine what to trust, share and act on. Being news-literate also means recognizing the critical role of the First Amendment and a free press in a democracy and interacting with news and other information in ways that promote engaged participation in civic life.”
There does not appear to be a bias in the organization toward a conservative or liberal point of view. As a matter of fact, they have a news literacy test a person can either choose a liberal or conservative path relative to misinformation.
As a journalism student at the U of M, we learned in our first reporting class to gather all the facts, and then fact check the facts. This is a good practice that is still true today, whether we are reading about the best bed to order on line, or information about our government agencies.
