Link TV Lets Students Edit TV News Online for News Literacy Studies

Link TV announces the launch of Know the News, a set of free educational web-based News Literacy tools focusing on international television news. The project is currently being beta tested by communications and journalism classes at the University of Texas, Austin; American University in Washington D.C.; and students from the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change based in Salzburg, Austria.

At knowthenews.tv, students create their own news stories by editing video from a wide variety of U.S. and international TV news reports; and their own news-talk program using out-takes from a nationally broadcast studio-based discussion series. When students publish the news “remixes” they have created, they are rated by site visitors for journalistic qualities including fairness, accuracy, and style. Using special class-code registration, professors can upload news clips for their students to edit, and access a variety of tools that will help them teach News Literacy and track their students’ work.

This October is the News Challenge. This interactive online game uses the year’s most compelling TV news clips from around the world to pull back the curtain of perception and reveal the powerful forces that shape news coverage.

Funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Know the News is a project of Link TV, the first nationwide television channel to provide Americans with global perspectives on news, events and culture. The channel is available on DIRECTV ch. 375, DISH Network ch. 9410, and selected cable channels. Link TV is operated by Link Media, Inc. a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

Know the News is now enlisting journalism professors who are interested in using these tools in their classrooms. For an invitation and a class code, or just to learn more, contact us at [email protected].