For the first time in years, academia might turn a critical eye to the liberal media.
The University of Michigan recently confirmed that it will offer a course in how legitimate news operations help spread “fake news.” While a former CNN journalist is teaching the class, “News Media Ethics,” it will do something university courses in journalism rarely do: critique the media’s biased nature.
The course will prompt students to ask a variety of questions, such as: “How do journalists cover the news? Do they report it honestly and truthfully? How valid are claims by critics that news media behaved unethically in their coverage of Donald Trump?”
Additionally, the course will cover broader “issues of bias, distortion, lack of perspective and other journalistic failings,” as well as “journalists’ responsibilities to their profession and to the public, and … proposed solutions to ethics violations.”
If anything, the University of Michigan’s new course is a true public service and should be offered at all colleges. A fair and balanced treatment of the contentious phenomenon of “fake news” in the classroom is the only way to break the stranglehold the left-wing media have on the term.
An increase in “fake news” courses on college campuses could reverse the damage done by the abuse of the term—students would finally learn that liberals can engage in fake news too. It would also educate the next generation of leaders to engage in real criticism of legacy media and the journalistic profession more generally.
No one should expect to truly learn what is “fake news” and what is “real news” when one side of the aisle gets to define those terms. There’s no incentive to self-criticize.
But if academia were to renounce its cozy friendship with the mainstream media and in a truly apolitical fashion call out “fake news,” whether it comes from liberal or conservative sources, then universities might finally become places where students are taught critical thinking skills.
Ultimately, “fake news” courses such as the one that will be offered at the University of Michigan aren’t a good idea just because they may benefit conservatives. They would also serve the chief goal of all higher education — to teach the truth, wherever it might lead.
The liberal media doesn’t have a monopoly on truth. More academic institutions should stop acting as if they do.
Troy Worden is a recent graduate in English and philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was president of the Berkeley College Republicans in 2017.
