In our recent webinar on Navigating the News Landscape with the Media Bias Chart, Vanessa Otero, CEO of Ad Fontes Media, discussed the challenges educators face in teaching students how to differentiate between reliable and unreliable news sources—and showed how to use the Media Bias Chart framework to teach news literacy in various educational settings.
We received so many great questions from the webinar attendees—here are Vanessa’s answers to a few of them. If you didn’t catch the webinar the first time, check out the recording!
Question: Are those reviewing the news sources from cross sections of different left/right positions?
Answer: Yes. We have them fill out a self-rating spreadsheet on which they classify their political positions on 20 different issues. They can select between decidedly to the left/right, somewhat to the left/right, and center/undecided on each issue. We take their overall self-ratings and sort them into strong left/right, lean left/right, and center. We have quite a mix.
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Question: Are Canadian new sources accounted for?
Answer: Not on the US Media Bias Chart, but we do plan to make a Canadian version soon. Ratings for each country require teams having political knowledge from those countries. We have recently started collaborating with international teams in Bosnia, Slovenia, and Spain and will be releasing those resulting charts soon. We plan to have as many international versions as we can over time.
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Question: Are the charts free to use for LibGuides, assignments, etc. ?
Answer: Yes, the licensed handouts from the webinar are free to use for those purposes.
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Question: Will the Media Bias Chart be available via Issues & Controversies?
Answer: We are discussing opportunities and presently collaborating to produce thought leadership resources.
