Media Literacy Resources

The national push to teach students how to read the media started right here: Media Literacy Now was founded in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 2013. The skills below help you do the most useful version of that work, which is telling what is true about your own town, your own school, and the people who hold power over both.

How to Spot Fake News

Most misinformation does not look fake. It looks like an ordinary post from an ordinary account, which is exactly why it spreads. Run a claim through these checks before you pass it on:

Check for verification: Are credible sources cited? Is the outlet known for accuracy?
Watch for emotional manipulation: Sensational language is often used to distract from weak evidence.
Seek other coverage: If a major event is reported by only one source, it may not be real.
Inspect the website: Look for red flags in the domain name and overall design quality.

How to Spot Deepfakes

A deepfake uses AI to put words in a real person’s mouth or a real face on someone else’s body. The tools keep getting better, but these tells still show up often enough to be worth a second look:

Facial inconsistencies: Look for unnatural lighting, skin-tone mismatches, or digital blur.
Reflection errors: Glasses or earrings may reflect poorly rendered backgrounds.
Speech-sync issues: Mismatched audio and lip movement can be a clear giveaway.

See more at the MIT Media Lab’s Detect Fakes guide.

AI-Generated Content

Beyond faked video, AI can now write articles, paint photographs, and clone voices by the thousand. The habit that protects you is simple: slow down and confirm before you share.

Text tells: AI-written text often sounds fluent but generic. If an article reads smoothly but lacks named sources, specific dates, or concrete details, look more closely.
Image tells: AI images commonly distort hands, fingers, and any text within the image. Edges of hair, clothing, and backgrounds are other spots to examine carefully.
Voice and video cloning: AI can convincingly replicate a real person’s voice. Extraordinary claims made through audio or video warrant independent verification before sharing.
Check the source: Who published this? What do they gain from it? A missing or unfamiliar byline is worth investigating before you trust or share content.

Fact-Checking Resources

When a claim needs a quick gut check, start with the tools built for exactly that. Treat what they find as a lead to confirm, not the final word:

Fact-check sites: Snopes, FactCheck.org, and PolitiFact.
Bias trackers: Use AllSides to compare perspectives across the spectrum.
Reverse image search: Use Google Images to trace visual misinformation to its source.
AI detection tools: Hive Moderation and InVID help identify AI-generated images and video.

Check Claims About Your Own Town

Most media-literacy advice stops at national news. The harder and more useful skill is checking a claim about your own city: what your state representative actually voted for, what a local budget really says, whether a viral post about your school is true. Massachusetts puts the primary sources online, so you can get past the rumor to the record.

Find who represents you: Enter your address at Find My Legislator to get your exact state representative and senator.
Read the actual vote: Look up a bill at the Massachusetts Legislature bill search, then open its roll call to see how each member voted, instead of trusting a post that tells you how they voted.
Know the official domain: Real state information lives on mass.gov and malegislature.gov, and your town’s real site almost always ends in .gov. A lookalike on some other domain is where a lot of local misinformation hides.
Go to the source document: Meeting minutes, budgets, and town warrants are public records. When a claim is about your town, ask to see the paper it came from.

Massachusetts News You Can Trust

Knowing which outlets actually staff the Massachusetts State House is its own media-literacy skill. These newsrooms report on state government for a living, and they show their work:

GBH News and WBUR: Boston’s two nonprofit public newsrooms, both covering Massachusetts politics, education, and local communities.
State House News Service: an independent wire service that has covered the State House since 1894 and is the only news outlet allowed on the floor of the House and Senate.
Media Literacy Now: the Massachusetts nonprofit that has pushed to teach these skills in schools across the country.
Massachusetts DESE: the state education department treats news and media literacy as part of civics and publishes a media-literacy resource for schools.

Support Local Journalism

When a local newspaper closes, the town meetings and school budgets it used to cover can go unwatched. Massachusetts has strong statewide newsrooms, but the reporting closest to your own street depends on small local outlets. Here is how a student keeps that reporting alive:

Subscribe: Back independent local news outlets and digital publications with your dollars.
Engage: Attend public meetings, ask questions, and build relationships with reporters.
Write: Submit letters to the editor and share your voice.

Explore more: Local Media

The next time something about your town lands in your feed, take five minutes to check it before you share. That habit is what media literacy actually looks like.

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