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At the meetings, young people mentioned that the main function of mass media is to inform, but it does not always happen, that is why they do not believe everything that the media write. One of the reasons of mistrust invoked by students was that the media fail to provide to the public true, credible information and that they intuitively feel this non-truth when they read newspapers, watch TV or listen to the radio.
To correctly search for information and be able to analyze journalistic materials knowingly, not just based on their own intuition, lyceum students together with Liubomir Gutu, journalism student at A. Russo University of Balti, defined the role of mass media in general and particularly clarified the structure of a news story and its peculiarities. Then, from theory they continued with practice, illustrating these definitions and concepts by examples of more or less professional news stories from national and international media. To better understand the role of journalists in informing the public, participants in media literacy lessons watched a video produced by the IJC, “Public trust in journalists.”
Further, students were familiarized with the concept of manipulation, which they associated with such terms as lie or a way to impose an opinion on someone. Discussion also touched upon some manipulation instruments used in journalistic materials, such as video tricks, music effects, selective sources, manipulating headlines. In order not to become victims of manipulation, students were encouraged to use a variety of sources of information, to analyze what they read in mass media and in their turn to transmit this knowledge and advice to their families, friends and other members of their communities.
In the end, several participants in the event shared their opinions about what they learned.
Ana Bologa, student of V. Dumbraveanu Lyceum in Corlateni: “Such media activities have a fundamental role in the development of every young person, because they help us correctly choose the information sources we use and avoid manipulation in mass media.”
Daniela Cateli, student of V. Alecsandri Lyceum in Balti: “I understood why I need to be correctly informed and what the essence of news is. I think that a good citizen must know how to determine the truth of a news story.”
Four other media literacy lessons will be organized in different parts of the country with the help of a group of university students and professors that were trained in August 2015 in the field of media literacy in a similar program implemented by the IJC.
Media literacy lessons are conducted as part of “Freedom of expression and mass media development in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and Southern Caucasus” project implemented by the IJC with the support of Deutsche Welle Akademie and funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany.
