Yosuel, a high school student from Loíza, wanted to know how recovery funds were being used in his town after Hurricane María. Coralis was curious about the information available on solar panels installed on agricultural land in her municipality of Salinas. Adriana, Raisel, and other students asked the Housing and Health Departments about the status of construction projects for the sports complex and the new hospital in Vieques. Meanwhile, Yanira and Yarimar inquired about the steps the Municipality of Lares, where they live, had taken to address the lack of drinking water in areas where service is interrupted daily.
Do these young citizens have the right to access this information? Absolutely! In fact, several of these requests were answered by agencies and municipalities after being submitted as part of Medioscopio, a project led by the Institute for Journalistic Training of the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI). The initiative aims to train public school students to become critical media consumers and citizen journalists.
Since 2022, more than 80 students have learned through workshops how to verify information, identify reliable sources, and analyze how gender and racial identity are portrayed in the media to understand how those representations shape public perception of a group or community. They have also explored how to create podcasts and use rap as a narrative tool.
These democratic education efforts are known as “media literacy,” which teaches the skills needed to access and evaluate information from various channels and media outlets.
Every year during the last week of October, Global Media and Information Literacy Week, established by UNESCO in 2012 and recognized by the United Nations in 2021, highlights the importance of promoting factual, timely, transparent, accessible, and multilingual information grounded in scientific evidence.
This week’s observance seeks to intensify efforts to combat disinformation by strengthening people’s ability to distinguish between truthful and false information. In today’s digital and artificial intelligence era, these civic education campaigns are more vital than ever.
According to UNESCO, 56% of the world’s population — especially younger generations — say they rely on social media to stay informed about current events. Yet two out of three digital content creators (2024) admit they don’t verify information before sharing it online. Still, 73% of them express interest in receiving fact-checking training to help curb disinformation and online hate speech.
Given this reality, programs like Medioscopio have become an essential point of reference in Puerto Rico for democratic education efforts, aiming to empower younger generations to expose wrongdoing and seek solutions to problems affecting their communities.
A few weeks ago, Senator Brenda Pérez Soto of the New Progressive Party introduced Senate Bill 820, which aims to create the Puerto Rico Media and Digital Literacy Act. The measure would require the Department of Education to “progressively and systematically” integrate media and digital literacy competencies into the public school curriculum, enabling students to learn about “fact verification and corroboration” and the “application of fact-checking methodologies.”
This legislative proposal could represent a step in the right direction.
An essential component of fostering stronger critical thinking among students is providing a well-rounded education rooted in the defense of human rights, particularly the right of access to public information, recognized under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
However, the same senator proposing the media literacy legislation voted in favor of Senate Bill 63 (PS 63), which seeks to further restrict access to public information in Puerto Rico by adding new limitations to the 2019 Transparency Act.
In every Medioscopio session held in the towns of Loíza, Salinas, Vieques, and Adjuntas, I have had the opportunity to lead a workshop on free speech and access to public information. The final exercise in each session involves discussing, drafting, and submitting public information requests in real time. The students’ interests are diverse and genuine, from learning why their schools have closed to understanding the growing climate change crisis. They represent a segment of society that is alert, engaged, and eager to actively shape public policies that impact their lives and communities.
Today, these students, like any person in Puerto Rico, have the right to request and obtain information held by the government. The Constitution protects that right. Yet the “rules of the game” for agencies, municipalities, the Legislature, and the Judicial Branch when providing public information are set by the 2019 Transparency Act. If PS 63 becomes law, it would create additional bureaucratic barriers to exercising our right to know, meaning that requests like those made by these students might go unanswered in the future.
Under the version of the bill approved by the Senate — without holding public hearings — if the information Coralis requested about solar panels on agricultural land in Salinas was not available in a single document but scattered across various reports and files, the municipality or agency could refuse to disclose it. If Adriana, Raisel, and their classmates failed to include the email address of the mayor of Vieques or the Housing and Health secretaries — information not easily found online — their request for updates on the construction of the sports complex and new hospital on Vieques would be deemed “defective” and could go unanswered. And if Yanira and Yarimar lacked email addresses from which to send their request, or lived in areas without an assigned postal address, they would be unable to submit their petition about the drinking water problem in Lares.
According to UNESCO, citizens who are media and information literate “are equipped to engage more effectively in dialogue, freedom of expression, access to information, gender equality, diversity, peace, and sustainable development.” In Puerto Rico, achieving this goal requires strengthening and empowering citizens rather than restricting their rights or spreading misinformation about human rights.
There is an evident contradiction in Senator Pérez Soto’s stance: voting in favor of PS 63, without listening to the concerns of civil society groups and the press that oppose the measure, while simultaneously promoting media literacy. This inconsistency deserves clarification.
As revealed by a fact-checking exercise conducted by the CPI, the intervention by New Progressive Party Senator Ángel Toledo during the legislative session discussing PS 63 was nothing more than a disinformation campaign — one that lacked rigor in its claims about response deadlines for information requests in various U.S. jurisdictions. One might well ask whether it is our legislators themselves who would benefit most from initiatives like Medioscopio, which foster critical thinking and help curb the spread of disinformation.
Across civil society, our educational campaign regarding PS 63 continues as the bill now heads to the House of Representatives, which has announced plans to hold public hearings but has yet to set dates. We invite everyone committed to advancing media literacy grounded in human rights to defend our right to know and join this effort.
This translation was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and clarity.
