National News Literacy Week, Jan. 24-28, is needed more than ever; here are tools to help your newsroom participate

National News Literacy Week is Jan. 24-28 this year, an annual initiative that the News Literacy Project and E.W. Scripps Co. designed to raise awareness of the importance of news literacy for students and the general public. It differs from Media Literacy Week in October. 

From the website: "This annual event underscores the vital role of news literacy in a democracy and provides audiences with the knowledge, tools and abilities to become more news-literate. It also aims to inspire news consumers, educators and students to practice news literacy and to strengthen trust in news media by reinforcing the role of credible journalism."

The site has free ads and social-media graphics you can share with readers, along with a host of other resources for teachers, the news media, and the general public.

The need for news literacy has never been greater. Only 29% of Americans said they trust the news, dead last among the 46 counties surveyed for a 2021 Reuters Institute report. Finland, which has dedicated considerable resources to increasing news literacy, had the highest percentage of news consumers who trust the press.

Conservative Americans were by far the most likely to mistrust mainstream news coverage in the study, with 75% who identified as conservative saying they believed coverage of their views was unfair. A recent study from Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism sought to better understand, through focus groups and interviews, about conservatives' disproportionate mistrust of the news media, especially regarding pandemic coverage. Researchers found that the mistrust was "fueled by misinformation or fostered by insular media echo chambers." Even participants who were exposed to accurate information did not believe it because they were primed to view it with suspicion.