With half of U.S. adults getting their news from social media and YouTube, it’s tough to know what to believe anymore — but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Three local journalists are offering free workshops to help Central Coast community members become savvy, responsible media consumers. Their presentation, Moment of Truth: Sorting Fact from Fiction in the Misinformation Age, includes practical tips and customized for each audience.
Presenters Starshine Roshell, Lisa Osborn and Amy Marie Orozco won project funding from the national Association for Women in Communication (AWC) Advancement Fund. All three are active members of the Santa Barbara organization AWC-SB.
Moment of Truth will teach information seekers to use critical thinking and journalistic fact-checking tools at a time when elections, AI and social media make it tricky to know what’s real.
Participants will learn how to spot doctored images, check sources, resist falling for “ragebait” — and avoid being called out by your friends online for posting fake news.
Teachers, group facilitators and nonprofit leaders can submit requests nown for presentations beginning in August, via learn@momentoftruthtraining.org.
“Facts matter,” said Roshell, a longtime Independent columnist and volunteer with the News Literacy Project. “And we’ve all seen – from politics to global health to breaking news – how misinformation impacts and even threatens real lives. We’re all responsible for stopping [misinformation] in its tracks.”
In fact, nothing less than our democracy depends on it.
”Voters deserve access to truthful information in order to make informed decisions,” said Osborn, who advises and mentors college students and broadcast news reporters at UCSB’s radio station. “With technology rapidly evolving, it’s getting increasingly harder to identify what’s real and what’s not.”
“We’re all vulnerable to the consequences of the rapid and constant changes in how news is delivered,” said Orozco, a print media veteran who has led multiple Central Coast publications. “Having the skills to sort through the onslaught of information is crucial.”
The Moment of Truth project will also feature a series of brief audio segments offered free to radio stations, and articles/op-eds for print and digital news outlets.
Moment of Truth is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Foundation with funding provided by the AWC Advancement Fund.