08 Informed Spotlight


“Hey Alexa, what’s the news?”


podcasts, WhatsApp, Snapchat, YouTube and the smart speaker in your siting room all competing with the TV, radio and newspapers, greater sophistication in media literacy is needed. For the journalist the story is about the who, why, what, where and when. For the reader it has always been: “Why are they telling me this?” But, increasingly, it is also “Who is telling me this?” as the constant bombardment and buzz of information from our mobile devices makes it hard to track where the news without mastheads is coming from. For young people, many of whom learned to use their iPad in the pram, it can be a minefield. Tey are constantly targeted by a range of vloggers and “influencers” paid by advertisers to promote their wares among the make-up tips and whacky videos. Digital marketing company, Exposure Ninja, claims on its website: “A whopping 81 per cent of the population trusts the advice they get from bloggers, making them very powerful advocates for any brand online.”


On the first Monday of Media Literacy


Week (18 to 22 March), the NUJ brought together a panel of media experts who work on projects to promote beter understanding of the news process, particularly for young people. Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general


With non-stop news popping up on our digital devices, Frances Rafferty asks how journalists can play a role in helping people make sense of it all


Hey Alexa, are your stories second- sourced, the data confirmed by the Office of National Statistics and are you following the NUJ code of practice? Hey Alexa, is my news coming from a neo-liberal media mogul, Saudi Arabian prince, Ofcom-regulated broadcaster, leſt- leaning Trust or Keith’s mum? Half the people who own voice-activated digital appliances use them for news and information. Because the ways people receive their news proliferate, with Facebook, Instagram, Google, iTunes,


secretary, said the union had a long tradition of supporting ethical journalism, promoting a diverse media industry and regularly works with journalism colleges. “Boosting our critical capacity to weed out what’s been fact-checked from what has not is the challenge we all face and a skill we need to help our children acquire from the earliest possible age,” she said. “Trust in journalism underpins all this


work – as does having a media which reflects the world it depicts.” Kate Morris, a former journalist and


convenor of the BA in Journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London, said the Edelman Trust Barometer 2019 found that 55 per cent of British people believe the media does not represent


Mat Kenyon


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