Searchlights and Sunglasses Chapter 5: Guided Reading Questions

1) Journalism, media innovation, freedom and community are valuable to the process of democracy and civics education because they allow the knowledgeable to reach out to the sometimes uninformed and even sometimes misinformed community in the most efficient and beneficial way. 2) The two examples of modest projects that the Knight Foundation helped to fund are a major youth journalism initiative with a website entitled SchoolJournalism.org as well as Sunshine Week. 3) The pursuit of the truth is so very important in our society today because the ignorance of the truth in order to stick with only desirable information while denying other truth outside of our news orbits leads to disaster due to widespread misconceptions that result in misunderstandings and many problems and much hostility within communities. 4) Journalism contributes to the process of truth-seeking in that it can in many cases be a source of the unmodified truth on matters of importance. Innovation also contributes to truth-seeking in that it can provide new and perhaps even better means of finding the truth. 5) "Comfort news" is, essentially and in the simplest of terms, the news that falls within our comfort zone. It is only the truth that we can handle; it does not include opposing views or challenging information that can upset us or lead us to question ourselves. 6) A few other comparisons the author makes between news and food are: (1) we need food daily for the body and news daily for the mind, (2) just as we choose junk food over healthy food, we choose biased and sometimes manipulative and deceptive journalism rather than good and informative journalism, etc. 7) According to the author, "we the people" drive media consumption. 8) Literacy is important to our society because it is essential in becoming a first class citizen in the digital age. 9) Digital literacy contributes to media literacy, news literacy, and civics literacy in that allows people access to a multitude of sources of these areas of information and the ability to distinguish between them what is truth and what is deception or manipulation. 10) The author defines great journalism as writing that does not just inform an audience in an interesting way but it also engages communities. 11) The San Francisco Public Press waited 32 months to get tax-exempt status. 12) The problem with the way the IRS grants media outlets non-profit status is that the prerequisites for non-profit status were published before the Internet was made, which makes them outdated and not adapted to the digital age. 13) After 9/11, support for and agreement with the First Amendment sharply dropped amongst Americans. 14) Schools observe Constitution Day on September 17th which is the anniversary of the 1787 signing of the Constitution. 15) Teachers should know about current media technology because it allows them to find creative ways to connect with their students - using social media would be an example.