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Friday, December 20, 2019

What other nations can learn from Finns' war on fake news

Americans have increasingly struggled with media literacy in the past few years as sources of false information, many of them Russian, have found ever trickier ways of aping news. But Finland, which has a long history with Russia, has been leading the charge against fake news for much longer. Its government launched a media literacy initiative in 2014 that aims to teach residents from all walks of life, including students, journalists and politicians, how to spot and counter false information meant to mislead the public, Eliza Mackintosh reports for CNN.

Though it's difficult to assess the results, the program appears to be working, and officials from all over Europe and as far away as Singapore are looking to copy Finland's success because they're worried about Russia and other potential disruptors. However, a Finnish school director told Mackintosh the curriculum might not work as well in other countries.

"The small and largely homogenous country consistently ranks at or near the top of almost every index – happiness, press freedom, gender equality, social justice, transparency and education – making it difficult for external actors to find fissures within society to crowbar open and exploit," Mackintosh reports. And, "Finland tops the charts for media trust, which means its citizens are less likely to turn to alternative sources for news."

That's far different than the landscape in many European countries, as well as in the United States. The U.S. has reason to worry about media literacy too; misleading and incendiary social media ads and posts were a key part of Russia's strategy to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.

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