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How to choose your news - Damon Brown

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With the advent of the Internet and social media, news is distributed at an incredible rate by an unprecedented number of different media outlets. How do we choose which news to consume? Damon Brown gives the inside scoop on how the opinions and facts (and sometimes non-facts) make their way into the news and how the smart reader can tell them apart.

Additional Resources for you to Explore

How the media landscape has changed

Media visionary Clay Shirky gave a TED Talk on how the media landscape has changed. “The moment we’re living through, the moment our historical generation is living through, is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.”

In other words, the amount of information we are capable of capturing is unprecedented. As a result, we need new techniques to filter through the information and need to work much harder than previous generation to better understand our world.

Watch Clay Shirky’s fascinating media discussion on TED-Ed.

Understanding social media

The TED Book “Our Virtual Shadow: Why We Are Obsessed with Documenting Our Lives Online” discusses the challenges of social media turning every day folks into journalists. The chapter “A World of Mush” focused on the evolution of news and how, in our modern age, “A rumor can carry as much weight as a verified fact.”

You can read an excerpt of Our Virtual Shadow on the TED blog.

Journalism can be much more than reporting. An authentic, human narrative touches audiences and keeps them reading. Learn how to shape a human-centered news story, and the importance of facts, context and heart.

In 1992, Stella Liebeck spilled scalding McDonald's coffee in her lap and later sued the company, attracting a flood of negative attention. It turns out there was more to the story.

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About TED-Ed Animations

TED-Ed Animations feature the words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators. Are you an educator or animator interested in creating a TED-Ed Animation? Nominate yourself here »

Meet The Creators

  • Educator Damon Brown
  • Producer Aaron Augenblick
  • Director Alisa Harris-Norico
  • Compositor Kristofer Wollinger
  • Script Editor Alex Gendler
  • Narrator Addison Anderson

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