‘Media literacy’ advocates push to create savvier consumers of news and information

Essential skill: Media literacy advocates believe that separating fact from fiction is a vital survival skill in a culture drowning in a tsunami of information. — 123rf.com

THE Instagram headline was pithy and alarming: “Head of Pfizer Research: Covid Vaccine is Female Sterilisation”. And the report, from a murky source, could have had real-world consequences, coming in 2020 just as the United States rolled out the first vaccines to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

That made the story a perfect tool for an educator trying to teach secondary school students how to separate fact from fiction – a survival skill in a culture drowning in a tsunami of information.