The Media Literacy Myth: Why Pennsylvania Shouldn't Follow Washington, Other States Down This Path
The Pennsylvania legislature is considering a bill to teach media literacy in schools, joining states such as Washington, Illinois, and Delaware in what proponents call the fight against misinformation.
I want to write about that idea before it becomes a law anywhere else in the country.
But I will offer you an option nearly identical to what they once offered at the Coors brewery in Golden, Colo., which, when I lived in suburban Denver and worked at the Post, was about 5 miles from my house:
At the plant, there was the long tour, where you walked through shining subway-tiled halls, learned about the history, craft, artistry, and industry of brewing beer in the Rockies. And there also was the short tour, where you walked about 20 feet, took a short staircase down to the rathskeller and had a couple of frosty pops. Either way, you left the plant feeling enriched.
Option 1: The full tour, which in this case is probably 1,000 words about why state-directed media literacy initiatives are dumb, don't work, and waste taxpayer money, with some color about why even the privately funded media literacy initiatives are dumb, waste money, virtue signal, and don't work; or
Option 2: You read the next paragraph and then go about your day.
The Short Tour: Everything You Need to Know About Media Literacy
For those taking the short tour: Media literacy requires nothing more than a simple recommendation that everyone—young, old, and those anywhere in between—should broaden their news-media source options as part of a healthy media diet. Every news-media organization has a distinct point of view. Some, like The Center Square, tell you what that is: We are focused on government accountability and the taxpayer's perspective in the news because that once was a pillar of American journalism, but now is largely absent. Some, like pretty much all of the mainstream Big Media organizations and many of the fringe nonprofits, don't. So you should read across brands about the subject matter that you care most about or has the greatest impact on your family, friends, and freedom. That's it. That's the entire curriculum.
The Long Tour: Why Solutions Journalism Is the Real Problem
For those taking the long tour: Accepting information solely from a single source is dangerous now, but not for the reasons these legislators claim. The real danger lies in the fact that so many news-media outlets have forsaken objective journalism for solutions journalism—a troubling trend that even the most trusted institutions have embraced.
Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, once a bastion of objectivity, now teaches solutions journalism as a legitimate approach. This isn't journalism; it's advocacy with a press badge. It’s awful.
Solutions journalism, for those unfamiliar with this academic euphemism, encourages reporters to not just identify problems but to advocate for specific solutions. It sounds noble until you realize it fundamentally transforms the journalist from observer to participant, from reporter to activist. When journalism schools teach advocacy over objectivity, they're not preparing journalists—they're training political operatives with notebooks.
Seriously, if there is something to defund in higher education, it should be any state or federal tax dollar that makes its way to journalism instructors to teach aspiring journalists to be anything other than objective, curious, and transparent.
The MediaWise Debacle: A Personal Case Study in Failure
I saw firsthand how misguided top-down media literacy efforts can be through my experience with the Poynter Institute's MediaWise project. Funded by Google and backed by Stanford University's prestige, MediaWise appeared to have everything needed for success: deep pockets, academic credibility, and a mission everyone could support—teaching people to identify reliable information online.
It failed spectacularly at the time. I think I was blamed for it failing, and I believe that I was replaced by NBC news anchor Lester Holt. Yeah, pretty sure that's what happened, and it still amounted to a popcorn fart of an idea on the execution side because—again—it didn't make sense to anyone.
Wrong Message, Wrong Time, Wrong Messenger
In my time associated with it, MediaWise failed because it was the wrong message at the wrong time from the wrong messenger. For more than a decade, Google has maintained a virtual stranglehold on local-market advertising.
Local merchants who once relied on their hometown newspapers, radio stations, and television broadcasters to connect with local audiences moved their advertising dollars to Google because, frankly, Google had a better product. And because even when there was a time for local-market newspapers and broadcasters to come together to build a unified marketplace through their trade organizations and associations, such attempts failed for a lack of belief that the digital ad marketplace would be anything more than just a passing trend and certainly a lack of investment in zeros and ones on the nascent interwebs.
Seriously, among all the great miscalculations in the history of business, there may have been none greater than thinking local-market reputation would overcome technology. There was a misread of the urgency, the market, the audience, and the competition. Aside from that, it was all good for the legacy publishers.
The Google Problem Nobody Wants to Acknowledge
In a free market, that's how it goes. No complaints there. However, the concentrated power of Google—which sits at the heart of any serious antitrust discussion involving media—is that it holds this dominance over all local markets simultaneously. Facebook's influence shouldn't be overlooked either, as it too became an incredibly powerful local-market connector between merchant and consumer. But Google remains the 8,000-pound gorilla in the room.
Google and Facebook (now Meta, I guess) have had on-again, off-again relationships with local publishers, but for the legacy media there was and will be no putting the horses back into the barn.
For that very reason, the idea that local-market publishers and broadcasters would have any interest in supporting MediaWise—lending it staff time (amid ongoing layoffs) and scarce financial resources (single-digit margins) to connect members of their community with anything associated with Google—represented a stunning misunderstanding of the market, misreading of trust, and absence of emotional intelligence.
You don't ask the wounded to reload the weapon that shot them.
When Government Decides What’s True
It has been about 10 years now that we have seen states across the country wanting to participate in similar folly with taxpayer dollars, adding a dangerous new element: government oversight of what constitutes reliable media.
Seriously? Only government would think that's a good idea.
When government funds media literacy education, it necessarily must define what sources are credible and which are not. Who makes these determinations? Political appointees? Education bureaucrats? Committees subject to lobbying and political pressure? The same legislators who can't agree on basic facts want to teach our children which facts to trust.
The State-by-State Folly
Illinois mandated media literacy education without funding, forcing teachers to become arbiters of truth without training or resources. They call that an unfunded mandate, and I am sure that it works swimmingly across my adopted home state.
Delaware spent $250,000 developing standards that someone, somewhere, had to decide were the “right” standards.
Washington distributes grants to districts that promise to teach the “correct” version of media literacy.
New Jersey created a commission to develop guidelines—as if truth could be determined by committee vote. Democracy!
Each of these efforts shares a fatal flaw: they position government as the ultimate authority on information reliability. This should terrify anyone who values free speech and free thought, regardless of political affiliation.
The Practical Problem Nobody’s Discussing
Consider the practical implications. A lesson plan must include examples of “reliable” and “unreliable” sources. In our polarized environment, these choices inevitably become political. Is Fox News reliable? CNN? The New York Times? Breitbart? The answer depends entirely on who’s writing the curriculum. Today’s approved source becomes tomorrow’s blacklisted outlet when political winds shift.
Government’s Proper Role: None
The proper role of government regarding media is simple: None.
The state should not attempt to interpret media for the benefit of taxpayers, just as it shouldn’t subsidize media companies to any extent.
(Set aside National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—that’s a separate matter deserving its own discussion.)
What Real Media Literacy Looks Like
Real media literacy doesn’t require million-dollar programs or government standards. It requires teaching actual critical thinking skills: logic, reasoning, research methods, understanding bias (including one’s own), historical context, and the economics of media.
These are thinking skills, not conclusion skills. They teach how to evaluate information, not which information to trust.
Parents and communities can handle this without government intervention. Libraries can offer programs on research skills. Civic groups can host debates on current events. Teachers can incorporate primary source analysis into existing curricula. None of this requires government-approved lists of reliable media sources or legislative involvement—and certainly not a dime of additional taxpayer money.
The Dangerous Precedent
The push for government-funded media literacy represents a dangerous precedent. Once we accept that government should teach our children which media to trust, we’ve crossed a line that’s nearly impossible to uncross. Today’s media literacy infrastructure becomes tomorrow’s information control system.
The Path Forward for Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania legislators should reject this right here and now. Instead of following other states down this path, they should trust parents, teachers, and communities to teach children how to think, not what to think. They should focus on traditional education—reading, writing, arithmetic, logic—that provides the foundation for lifetime learning and critical analysis.
The solution to our information challenges isn’t more government intervention. It’s less. Teach children to read widely, think deeply, be curious, and to question everything—including the institutions claiming to teach them the truth about truth.
That’s real media literacy. It costs $0.
That concludes the long tour. The rathskeller is down the steps.