Students at McClintock High School partnered with ABC15 to investigate how teens are consuming their news, and if they trust the source the information is coming from.

ABC15’s parent company, EW Scripps, partnered with the News Literacy Project, a national organization with the mission to help young people become better consumers of news and information by learning how to separate fact from fiction. Several Film & TV students had the opportunity to work with local news personality Steve Irvin to tell a story of how students at McClintock get their news, and more importantly, how they verify if that news is true.

“As I learned, today’s teenagers can’t even remember a time before the information landscape became a minefield,” Irvin said in a Facebook post. “‘Fake News’ has always been a part of their vocabulary. They view all news as biased in some way, as if they’ve almost given up on a reference standard for objectivity.”

The students spent several weeks filming dozens of interviews, editing footage, writing and rewriting scripts and consulting with ABC15 editors and producers to completed the 1:30 second package. The findings: Students are interested in current events and mostly get their news from social media, but often miss the next step to verify if something is true. But, that students are learning critical skills in some of their classes to help them verify the truth.

Irvin, who is a weekday evening anchor for ABC15, said though he thought he’d be teaching the students about journalism, that he walked away with new perspective on Gen Z.

“We began this effort believing we needed to reach young people – tomorrow’s voters and decision-makers – so they can become good consumers of news and information,” Irvin said in a Facebook post. “After spending a few weeks working with them, I believe, they may be more news literate than the rest of us.”

The new package will air on ABC15 in an upcoming broadcast.

News Literacy Week is coming up! @Steve_Irvin is working with the students at McClintock High School to highlight where younger generations are getting the news and how they’re verifying what they learn pic.twitter.com/HFlPciA1jv

— Courtland Jeffrey (@Court_Jeffrey) January 9, 2020