Next Steps

Go, you!

If you're here, you're doing a great thing by learning about news literacy, so give yourself a pat on the back. This is important work in the effort to maintain access to credible news so that we can make informed decisions and maintain a healthy democracy.

Take a look at all that you've learned so far, and then find out ways you can continue to explore topics in news literacy.

Let's review

• It is important to have free press in a democracy so that we can make truly informed decisions.
• News literacy skills empower us with tools and techniques to find the real story.
• Being news literate means having the skills to figure out if you can trust a source of information and believe specific news you encounter.
• News is verifiable, timely, important, unique, and interesting.
• Professional journalists follow a set of standards to do their job well. When you seek news, look for quality journalism that follows the standards.
• You want credible information. Vetting is the process of determining if the information you are ingesting is accurate and the sources are reliable.
• Misinformation is not credible and can be harmful when people make bad decisions based on bad information.
• Learn to look for red flags that signal misinformation and check sites like Snopes, Politifact, or RumorGuard to confirm a story's accuracy.
• Be responsible: don't share misinformation.

Next Steps