Saturday, November 8, 2025

Special Edition: Teens, Trust & Truth - New Data on News Literacy

Listen below:

Tune in weekdays for 10-min daily news roundups:

A new national survey shows many teens don’t trust the news. It found, for example, many underestimate how often journalists follow ethical standards and overestimate how often newsrooms make things up.

Today’s guest is Peter Adams from the News Literacy Project. He explains what the data really shows, why young people may be so skeptical, and how to tell credible reporting from everything else online.

We also talk about AI’s impact on the information landscape, and why recognizing good journalism matters just as much as spotting misleading content.

Plus: what gives him hope about Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and what all of us can do to help strengthen trustworthy news in our communities.

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Guest: Peter Adams

Peter Adams, a member of NLP’s executive team, oversees curriculum development, professional learning, research initiatives and family and community engagement programming. Before joining NLP, he co-led a student media after-school program for high schoolers in Chicago and taught at Roosevelt University and Chicago City Colleges. Prior to that, he taught English language arts and social studies in New York City. Peter graduated from Indiana University with a bachelor’s degree in English and African American studies and holds a master’s degree in the humanities from the University of Chicago.

More information is available at newslit.org, including newsletter sign-ups for The Sift (a weekly newsletter for educators) and Scroll Smarter (a monthly newsletter for parents).

RumorGuard.org features a curated collection of viral misinformation examples with quick, clear news literacy takeaways.

For K–12 educators, the Checkology virtual classroom — also available through newslit.org — offers interactive lessons and resources designed to help students think critically about the news and information they encounter every day.

Be sure to tune-in again each weekday (M-F) for our regular episodes to get quick, unbiased news roundups in ~10 minutes!