LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — As UNLV journalism students prepare for the next phase of their lives, they’re contending with an evolving news media literacy landscape, with non-traditional outlets gaining steam.
“I would love to say I wake up and read the morning paper, but that's just not the generation that we live in today, so like a lot of other people my age, just scrolling, though I do have a subscription to the New York Times,” said junior Alexandra Pacheco.
She’s far from the only one.
UNLV Visiting Lecturer T.R. Witcher sees it every day with his students.
“It's gotten a little bit harder because we can no longer assume that everybody read the New York Times today, or the Washington Post, or the Review Journal or watched the nightly news, or the morning news,” he said.
Like Pacheco said, members of the younger generation are turning to social media for information, but that doesn’t mean it’s always trustworthy.
“It might sound bad, but a lot of its just through passive scrolling when I'm on TikTok or Instagram," said freshman Jordan Vega. "You see a lot of news things and you're like, ‘Oh that's interesting, I want to look more on that,’ like the Luka Dončić trade. I saw that on TikTok and then instantly went to Google to fact check."
“We teach young writers and journalists and storytellers, try to be intentional in the decisions you're making as a journalist," Witcher said. "I think certainly reading, consuming information, consuming news, analyzing news, you have to be equally intentional."
Anchor Tricia Kean recently visited a local high school class for a similar discussion on media literacy. Watch the video to hear their thoughts:
Witcher says once they’ve got it, they’ve got it.
He says the more sources they consume, the easier it is to have conversations about what’s real and what’s fake.
“Anybody can post anything on social media and you also gotta check the username. If it's not a reliable source, then you probably go on Google and search the same headline and see if you're getting hits from reliable sources,” said freshman Whitaker Lummus
It’s a different story when it comes to their friends who aren’t enrolled in journalism courses.
“How do they translate that to their friends who aren't doing that?” Hinton asked.
“That's a great question. I don't know,” Witcher said. “I don't think our students have to hector their friends. I think maybe it's just they can encourage them, ‘Hey, there's more out there than just the five tweets you got on your phone.’”
While it sounds easy, it does take more work, and that’s the challenge.
“Our challenge is to try to again, just expose ourselves to good information, do our best, maybe less information so that when we are engaging it, we have a little bit more mental energy and critical faculty to really, can I trust where this is coming from,” he said.
