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The amount of supplies that my kid needed to bring to her first day of second grade was extensive. We had managed to find a cute pair of kitty earbuds, a nice selection of mermaid pencils – anything to distract her from the loss of that delicious freedom she enjoyed over the summer. Now we’re…

In today’s media landscape, we’re bombarded by news from a variety of sources — some legitimate, some not. Much of the information comes to us from people we trust — our friends and family on social media. Some of the information is true, but we suspect that some of it may be false. So how…

Is the Media Bias Chart…biased? YES. Like all humans, and all organizations run by humans, Ad Fontes Media is biased. All the people who run it and work at Ad Fontes are biased. So are all the people who have viewed the Media Bias Chart and pointed out that it is, in fact, biased. Can…

Media Literacy Picture this: you see a potato chip company’s commercial for their product, but no one is eating it. In fact, the commercial consists of fit, young, fashionably dressed people energetically dancing while holding the bag of chips. Okay, maybe at the end, one of them eats a chip. What are they selling? Chips?…

Since I wrote a more detailed version of this blog a year ago, much has changed. However, events like the pandemic, 2020 elections, and storming of the Capitol have only magnified the problem described below. Fortunately, since that time, it also seems that news quality and bias are beginning to matter to an increasing number of…

Everything you ever wanted to know about media literacy!

*I am the Founder and CEO of Ad Fontes Media and the original creator of the Media Bias Chart®. I wrote this response directly to the authors of an article entitled “Complex or Clickbait: The problematic Media Bias Chart,” which was posted on a popular blog for academic and research librarians called ACRLog (PDF of…

We, as humans, have basic needs for several things. One of them is food. Another is information. We are always, by necessity and want, taking in both. It’s fair to say we even love both food and information. But we also, as humans, have a propensity for indulging in too much of a good thing…