Teaching News Literacy in the Age of AI

World Press Freedom Day will be celebrated on May 3, 2026.  It's worth a look at new books related to this topic.  

TEACHING NEWS LITERACY IN THE AGE OF AI by Cathy Collins, an award-winning library media specialist, is an excellent resource. I wish that more schools made this topic (helping students to “recognize quality journalism, spot deepfakes, challenge misinformation, and critically analyze conspiracy theories”) a priority, but Collins has done a great job of compiling suggestions of resources (including multimedia tools and learning standards) related to these issues. A few examples (not all of which are free) include: Checkology (including several of their helpful posters); The News Literacy Project; ISTE (she extensively references their standards); PBS Learning Media; and Newsela. Some of her information is revealing, but from a decade ago and warrants updating, as do her references to Stanford History Education Group, now called Digital Inquiry Group. However, the more I read, the more excited and interested I became. It does take a while to get to the section on “Learning Activities,” but that is filled with ideas related to Social Studies, Science, Health, Mathematics and more. Also, this text could work well in a secondary newspaper class – an entire lesson could review the Code of Ethics for the Society of Professional Journalists or the eight factors (e.g., timeliness, proximity, interest, conflict) which Collins lists that “news organizations might use to evaluate whether to cover a particular event.” There are multiple Appendices, including a News Literacy Glossary. As Collins writes, “The future of informed citizenship is less about passively consuming information and much more about actively interrogating it. … Teaching them to question what they see, seek diverse viewpoints, and practice self-regulated attention is more important than ever.” 

THE INFORMATION STATE by Jacob Siegel (a contributing writer at Tablet, an American conservative magazine focused on Jewish news and culture) is subtitled “Politics in the Age of Total Control.” Siegel makes some thought-provoking claims such as when he explores the relationship between information and state power (“regime’s ultimate aim was not to censor or oppress, but to rule. … the information state refers to a form of government that replaces the democratic principle of consent with control”). However, I was very disappointed by his early comment when he wrote “I doubt that more than a few dozen people had been conversant in the finer points of the disinformation field at the start of 2016.” He only had to look at the critical thinking or information literacy (a term not included in his book) work being championed by librarians and educators at that time or the winner of that year’s National Business Book Award: A Field Guide to Lies by Daniel J. Levitin. In addition, Seigel seems to have a bias against President Obama and some of the actions taken by his administration; he certainly objects to attempts to even insinuate that Russia influenced the 2016 election while simultaneously rarely referencing the blatant and obvious lies from subsequent administrations. Overall, reviews are mixed: Booklist says, THE INFORMATION STATE “will challenge and enlighten readers on every page,” whereas Publishers Weekly describes it as a “hit-or-miss debut account.”