I ask the room, “Who wants to chime in on what media literacy means to them?” The room full of high school students smile sheepishly, looking around at their peers. Then from the back corner, a soft voice emerges.
It’s Bianca Alicea, a junior in a class rather filled with seniors. I ask her to come up and repeat her answer in front of the camera. It’s the answer we all hope to hear from the next generation- as worries of false information on social media is a key factor in today’s journalism classes.
“I want at least our news to be truthful and honest so our audience can rely on us as a verified source. They know that they won’t be decepted or influenced into a certain way of thinking,” said Alicea.
“Nothing worse than putting out something that is wrong. You don’t want to say an event’s on a particular date and have the wrong date or wrong times and those kinds of things,” said Patrick Vaughan, the Video Production teacher at Liberty High School.
Vaughan is one of the guiding voices Bakersfield students get in their broadcast classes.