Live Not By Lies!

What about the movement – sometimes referred to as a new industry – called Media Literacy? What is it? More importantly, what are the goals (stated and hidden)? Who is driving it? What is the desired end result?

The website MediaLiteracyNow.org is a good place to start. “Media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication.” Or a more up to date definition would be “Media literacy means the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with media in all forms by understanding the role of media in society, and building skills of inquiry and self-expression essential to participation and collaboration in a democratic society.”

That sounds great, right? Who wouldn’t want to help people analyze, evaluate, create and participate with media… and build skills of inquiry and self-expression? In fact, I completely agree with the definitions and goals stated on their website.

In fact, that’s another way of stating the goal of this website, to help citizens be more literate and better consumers and contributors to media.

So, what’s the problem?

In a fascinating interview with Marissa Streit for PragerU.com, Mike Bentz reveals the details. Several states are requiring Media Literacy Education programs in public schools – again this would be a good thing – except that in practice, they want to control what sources our children can use for news and information.

NewsGuard is the organization that they rely on for “rating” news sources as “reliable and safe.” They rate FoxNews as unreliable and PragerU as promoting disinformation or hate speach. Therefore these sites (and many other conservative sites) cannot be used as references (citations in papers, for example) by students.

You are deemed media literate only if you use the right (government approved) sources.

For Mike’s description of Media Literacy in Education – and suggestions on things we can do about it, see the YouTube video below – start at about 46:30.

Who is on the board of NewsGuard? Top executives from the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, the former General Secretary of NATO, the head of the Global Engagement Center for the State Department (the censorship arm of the State Department, and the head of the Department of Homeland Security. Ask yourself, why? Why all these big guns in government and military? What interest could they have in determining what sources of information should be censored?

For more details of how NewsGuard “deplatformed” PragerU’s videos see this interview of Marissa Streit.