Embrace Media Literacy: You'll Need It

By TMP 43rd Editorial Board

For the first time in six years, Milton’s Journalism half course will not be running for the 2025-2026 school year due to lack of student interest. Having run each year since its addition to the course catalogue, Journalism has been an integral part of Milton’s critical stream of consciousness. Many of its students grow to become excellent student journalists, articles written as part of its coursework periodically appear in both school newspapers, and students overwhelmingly emerge from the course as stronger critical thinkers and more discerning followers of current events. That interest in Journalism, a course that, according to the course catalogue, teaches students “the role a free press plays in a democracy,” has so sharply dwindled in a moment of widespread democratic backslide is deeply concerning.

Beyond Milton, the current US president has ushered in a more restrictive era for journalism via his connections with influential billionaires. In February 2025, Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, announced that the paper’s long-acclaimed opinion section would defend only two pillars: “personal liberties and free markets.” By restricting conversation topics to a limited set of acceptable positions, Bezos and others in power have created an echo chamber, often seen as a “social media problem,” within the very sources to which we are frequently advised to turn.

Meanwhile, whether through state repression or AI overload, the trend toward the suppression or distortion of the truth will likely only worsen in the years to come. Case in point: on January 7, Meta, whose social media platforms see over three billion users daily, announced its elimination of third-party fact-checking. When social media allows misinformation to circulate freely, trust becomes elusive, which is why, compared to the early 2000s, when 55% of Americans trusted the news media, less than one-third of the population in 2024 expressed confidence, per a Gallup poll last year. Information is power; winning the metaphorical “information war” plays an integral part in responding to injustice, but we are hopelessly doomed to lose if people no longer trust the news. The 124 journalists killed in 2024, the largest recorded number in a single year, will have died in vain if news consumers fail to engage with the truth they gave their lives to protect. Amidst a sea of falsehood, we must seek truth and must teach as widely as possible the critical eye needed to distinguish the two. In a time of declining collective trust, Milton should more proactively embrace media literacy.

Media literacy, at its core, is the ability to evaluate the meaning and veracity of anything that seeks to communicate a message, an essential competency in our currently misinformation-heavy media landscape. You, too, are the target of misinformation, and are susceptible to its effects even if you are aware of its pervasiveness. Media literacy reminds you to pause, question, and evaluate what you are consuming so you can make informed political, social, and personal decisions. Despite its critical importance, we, at Milton, have no mandatory course teaching fundamental media literacy concepts, nor do we place emphasis on any of these concepts in other aspects of school programming. This lack of emphasis on media literacy leaves students’ minds concerningly vulnerable to the increasingly hostile media landscape.

So, what can we, as the Milton community, do to fulfill our proposed mission of “embracing media literacy”? Simply knowing that bias or echo chambers exist is not enough. The real work of media literacy begins with initiative. Students should be taught and encouraged to compare narratives, weigh evidence, and discard sources that push one extreme, not just in a single journalism class, but across the curriculum. Media literacy concepts can be integrated into existing mandatory classes and even informal community spaces like Straus Dessert-style seminars. But curriculum alone isn’t enough; what we need is a shift in mindset. Media literacy requires stepping back from what feels familiar and scrutinizing our cherished beliefs. For most of us, this may cause discomfort, but we all need to contend with the reality that our ideas are flawed to become both better consumers and better humans. Media literacy isn’t just about interpreting the world: it’s about preserving the freedom to think for yourself within it.