Lie Detectors is a non-profit that works to help teenagers and pre-teens in Europe tell news facts from news fakes and navigate the shades of bias in between.
Lie Detectors recruits and trains working journalists and sends them as volunteers into classrooms for interactive classroom sessions aimed at helping young people aged 10-15 spot and resist the growing volume of manipulative media crowding their Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat accounts as they start to forge an independent world view.
Lie Detectors has no interest in telling young people what to think. It aims to empower them to base their choices on reliable information and be actively aware of bias and persuasion. Child safety is nothing new: children worldwide have long been taught not to accept sweets from strangers. As they increase their consumption of media, they need news literacy to do so wisely.
Currently in its start-up phase, Lie Detectors is supported by Hansjoerg Wyss and the Global Reporting Centre in Vancouver, Canada.
Mission
Its mission is to turn schoolchildren in Europe aged 10-15 into powerful lie detectors and critical thinkers in a world increasingly populated by propaganda and distorted facts online, empowering them to understand news media, make informed choices and resist peer pressure as they assemble their worldview.
-To turn working journalists into active participants in the drive for news literacy, creating positive contact between journalists and children as well as their teachers.
-To attune teachers to digital media risks and to the need for further classroom discussion of a topic often relegated to IT lessons and after-school clubs.
-To create memorable classroom experiences and lasting awareness of children’s own participation in social networks; to propel pupils into an ongoing conversation of news consumption and verifying news.
-To provide a link between schools and the very best existing news-literacy and news-verification initiatives.
-To influence educational policy-making through continued public speaking in varied fora, advocating for the systematic uptake and inclusion of news literacy in the curricula of teacher-training colleges and classrooms across Europe, as urged by Unesco and OECD. As part of this remit, Lie Detectors is a member of the EU’s new High Level Group on Fake News, advising the European Commission on how to tackle the spread and socio-economic impact of disinformation.
