Something big has happened and we want to know. We need to know.

We look for information on social media. People are sharing developments as they happen. There’s a lot of confusion, details are not clear but it’s an outrage already.

Is everything they’re saying real you wonder? Some of it seems far fetched or just a little bit off.

You check a trusted news organisation, you want to make sure the information you’re getting is right. Some of the details are different, but the main information seems to be right.

Right?

You receive a slew of What’s App messages. Everyone is shocked and outraged. There are some really damming and disturbing images being shared.

You return to the news organisation, politicians are starting to speak up. They condemn the violence but political lines are being drawn.

They identify the perpetrator and the frenzy spirals to a whole other level.

I think you get the picture. Unfortunately, we’ve all been there more than once and when time passes, we realise that there was really no point in being all wired up for those early developments. In fact, a lot of what was first reported was not accurate or, even worse, was a total fabrication by interested agitators and meme or slop factories generating clicks and outrage for money.

So, the best and most important thing to remember when big events happen is to take a breath, take a step back and disconnect for a bit.

Give it time.

And then…? Well, here are some points that I always try to remember when some big, traumatic incident happens.

1. Give it time! It takes time to gather accurate information and for accurate reports to filter through. Take a breath, focus on something else for a while if you can and give it time.

2. Stay away from social media. Your friends and contacts don’t know what’s going on, you can’t verify what’s being shared and you don’t want to share and amplify things that are not verified.

3. Go for local news. There’s no point in checking Australian news organisations if the event has occurred in Italy. If you must look for news, look for news organisations that are close to where the event has occurred. This doesn’t mean they’ll be correct or have the full picture, but there’s more of a chance the information will be up to date.

4. Check the sources. Try to verify the reports. This takes time, not just for you to check but also for different news organisations to verify that what they’re reporting is accurate. The more trusted sources that report something accurately and consistently the more likely that information is believable and verifiable. Still, this doesn’t mean they’re right unless there’s clear and sound evidence.

5. Watch out for outrage. Meme and slop factory content is produced quickly to cash in on the event and everyone’s need for information. By creating outrage, they drive engagement which is how they make money because a lot of social media platforms pay money. Their only goal is to create engagement and their motto is: ‘outrage + shock = engagement’.

6. Check your biases. Just because something seems right to you, you’re outraged and you want to tell the world that you were right, it doesn’t make it true. Go back to point 4 and check your sources, make sure you verify it with trusted sources and make sure there’s credible and verifiable evidence before you share it with anyone else.

7. Be critical. Never, ever trust anonymous sources and vague statements from the media. In fact, pay attention to the language they use. ‘An officer close to the investigation’, ‘an anonymous source’, ‘AP reports’, ‘we are seeking confirmation’, even ‘we can confirm’. All of them mean that, despite appearances, they don’t really have evidence and they cannot verify the information. They try to make it appear as if they do, though, because they want to report it before any other media organisation.

8. Look for patterns. If you’ve reached this stage, go back and look for patterns. Chances are that if information is being reported by different organisations consistently, there’s more of a chance this is accurate and true. All the other reminders and caveats I’ve mentioned before sitll apply. Be cautious.

9. Don’t believe the experts. In heightened situations news organisations bring in so called experts. These experts don’t know what has happened on the ground and they are just giving opinions based on prior knowledge. This is not verifiable, accurate information. The experts fill air time, particularly in our current era for 24/7 news, but the so called expert may be totally wrong and have absolutely no idea. In fact, they most likely have no idea and time will prove them wrong.

10. Don’t fall for blanket statements and blame. News organisations are quick to look for someone to blame and to make blanket statements. They often get it wrong. But even if they get the perpetrator right, remember that they don’t exactly know the motives and remember that the perpetrator, whatever their background, is not representative of their whole community, culture, religion, or political end of the spectrum.

And again… Instead of doing all that. Isn’t it easier to just disconnect and give it time? Most information in the first 24, 48 even 72 hours is not accurate, misses nuance, lacks any depth, cannot be verified and will only make you sick and may lead to you being misinformed and spreading misinformation.

This is not to disparage news media. I have a huge respect for journalists. But good journalists investigate. Good journalists go deep and find evidence, they assess all the information critically and verify it before they write. And that, is different to reporting, that takes time.

So, if you can, slow down and take time yourself.

KICKING AROUND THE NET

• Some good news about book bans from Massachussetts where Governor Maura Healey signed a new law protecting students' freedom to read and protecting librarians and educators. Appropriately, the new law was signed at the Franklin Public Library, the oldest public library in the United States.

• How’s AI affecting scholarship? Well, AI ghosts have been prolific and are contaminating academic publishing with “Elena Vasquez
  and Marcus Chen have [publishing] as volcano
  experts, astronauts, thriller protagonists, podcast hosts, and academic co-authors across hundreds of independently produced AI-generated
  documents, never having lived.” You can read all about it in an essay written by real academics here.

• Members of the Australian Media Literacy Alliance have published a new report, News and Young Australians in 2026, a collaboration between researchers at Western Sydney University, Queensland University of Technology and the University of Canberra. The whole report is worth a read but they also have key facts and an infographic. The main things that stood out to me is that even though teens know the importance of news and they want to stay informed, active news engagement has declined in the last three years.
  Young people feel the news organisations have no idea what their lives are like, 82% said news is
  too focused on negative things happening in the world and 70% reported they struggled to find news relevant to them. Importantly, the report also says that news literacy education is related to greater digital media knowledge.

• The push from big tech to embed their AI models into everything continues and the push back against AI, that’s even uniting people from all sides of the political spectrum, continues too. Kelly McEllroy of the Oregon State University, has published a very interesting paper found on the IFLA repository that argues “media literacy can and should include opportunities to resist
  and reshape specific technologies,” in what she terms teaching ‘media quiteracy’ in libraries. This is an interesting paper where instead of the usual advice that surrenders to the AI hype and teaches people to use AI ‘critically’ without really defining what ‘critically’ means and without giving the option and knowledge to opt out and refuse (ultimately, teaching them to use AI and normalising it), McEllroy offers examples and general guidelines to ensure that discussing the pitfalls and ethical issues around use of AI are presented and teaching how to opt out of AI is presented. Libraries play and important part in media and AI literacy and McEllroy’s paper is excellent food for thought.

• As a former teacher and one who always embraced critical pedagogy I have a very healthy critical (probably even cynical) view of standardised tests and international data comparisons. NAPLAN means nothing to me and I consider the PISA results largely irrelevant too. But news media and managers love that kind of data, as if every child, their knowledge, learning, growth and mind could be reduced to a standard set of data. Anyway… The data is out and Australia’s results are bad with a significant decline. Australia’s not alone though, as our decline mirrors the global decline. It’s a global trend and a lot of people will blame teachers, students, parents, video games, AI. We tend to focus on the negatives. The thing is, kids these days have so many more distractions and demands on them. We used to get bored, we had so much time. Now, most kids never have free time, as soon as they’re out of school grounds they’re running around from one structured activity to another, whether that’s sport, or music, or tutoring to try to get ahead on maths. Then, they have homework to do before bed. Then there are the distractions, they have streaming services, YouTube, social media (yes, most of them are still using it despite the so-called ban), video games, AI chatbots, etc. In my view, they read a lot but not necessarily books. It’s not just one thing that’s causing a decline in reading as measured in standardise tests. There are lots of reasons largely related to the huge change our lives, society and media landscape have suffered in the last 40 years. We should take some action on the negatives, definitely but if we want positive and long lasting change we should really focus on the positives. I couldn’t agree more with Australia Reads’ campaign. We need well funded and resourced school libraries, we need to normalise all types of reading and we need to foster a love of reading from a young age by giving them a wide range of texts and supporting their choices. As pathetic as it is that a campaign like this has to be run, I encourage everyone to sign the petition to mandate qualified teacher-librarians in every school.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

What can I say… I love mountain hikes, I love New Zealand and I love water, whether it’s the living ocean, the breaking of the waves, a calm lake, a large but placid river, or the roar of waterfalls.

Visiting NZ last year was a dream come true. I’d been waiting for that to happen about four decades and it didn’t disappoint. The whole country is beautiful. I chose this photo but I could’ve chosen one hundred others.

I’ll definitely go back to NZ. That’s for sure.