EAST LANSING, Mich. (WXYZ) — For the fifth year in a row, our parent company, E.W. Scripps, is joining forces with the News Literacy Project, a national non-profit.
The goal of the week is to highlight the importance of news literacy, a concept and skill greatly needed in this time where the way we consume information has changed dramatically.
As part of this initiative, I talked with broadcast journalism students at Michigan State University to learn what they're studying and how they hope to make an impact on the future of news.
Distributing news primarily began with newspapers, and around the 1920s, people started listening to radio. By the 1950s, everyone's eyes were glued to broadcast television. Today, it seems like everyone is on YouTube and social media.
Mckenzie Terpstra and Ethan Hunter are both Michigan State University broadcast journalism students who find themselves practicing their craft, because, like many of us journalists, they caught the news bug young.
"When I was growing up, my parents would call me 6 o’clock new. That was kind of the nickname they gave me because I’d come home from school and give them the debrief about everything that happened throughout my day," Terpstra said.
"On Sundays we would always watch '60 Minutes.' I feel like I was probably the only 10-year-old watching '60 Minutes,'" Hunter said.
Today, they're both learning to shoot, write and gather sources, and track scripts, just like broadcast journalists have been doing for decades.
For them, however, the future probably looks different. There's no arguing the way people consume news is changing dramatically.
"What do you think of the concept of getting your news from social media?" I asked.
"I will admit, I get a lot of my news from social media. And honestly, I think it’s a double-edged sword. It definitely has its benefits and that’s that hard news comes out so much faster and it’s a little bit more real," Terpstra said. "Obviously, the other side of that sword is a lot of misinformation."
With more people scrolling to get their news, there's more to consume and much more misinformation.
A 2022 study found that when TikTok users searched for top news stories on the platform, about 20% of the videos brought to them contained misinformation.
"I have been pushing very hard for media literacy classes here, for not just our students but for all students," Bob Gould, a broadcast journalism professor, said.
He's the man helping students hone their skills and navigate journalism. He's worked in broadcast journalism for over 30 years.
"Now, as soon as you know something, immediately it’s on social and it puts a lot more pressure I think on young journalists that have to do more and more," Gould said.
He tells me with the industry changing rapidly, rather than tell his students why they should pursue broadcast journalism, he attempts to instill why broadcast journalism and local news, in general, is important to consume.
"Understanding how to consume news, and what news is, and why news is important, why journalism is so important, that’s gotta be what we teach," he said.
For Terpstra, news is important because she hopes to make her impact by helping implement needed change.
"It gives me the opportunity, obviously, not to spew whatever I want, but to share the stories about other people that deserve to be shared and in some cases bring attention to the things that don’t have attention," she said.
For Hunter, he wants to make his impact by getting more people to sit down for "60 Minutes" informative interviews again.
"Journalism is still where my heart is and I hope that we find a way to get back to the nation watching that," he said.
