Teaching Future Journalists the News: The Role of Journalism Educators in the News Literacy Movement

Abstract

The UK’s nascent news literacy movement features a range of voices, including regulators, educationalists and journalists, but those of journalism educators working in higher education are largely absent. This study, based on a survey and semi-structured interviews with senior journalism educators from across UK universities, seeks to address this gap. This study’s key research questions examined the extent to which news literacy is taught on UK undergraduate journalism programmes and the appetite of lecturers for increasing that teaching. It found that news literacy concepts are widely taught on UK journalism undergraduate programmes even if they are not named as such. Participants understand news literacy as encompassing instrumental skills alongside a critical approach to the news industry itself. It found little engagement between journalism educators in universities and the growing number of external news literacy projects. The study ends with a series of recommendations; chiefly, that journalism educators should be part of the development of material used in news literacy education for schools, libraries and elsewhere, and that journalism educators should consider offering short courses, seminars or online resources about news literacy within their own institutions that are applicable to students of other disciplines.

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