Medioscopio Trains Youngsters to Have a Critical Eye Toward the Media

Acting as spokespeople for their community and applying critical thinking to analyze the news are the main lessons given to a group of youngsters from Loíza who participated in workshops during four months with a lawyer, a photographer, an anti-racism educator, librarians, community leaders, and, above all, many journalists. “I know how to tell my truth.” “I learned about tools to identify fake news.” “I see different perspectives.” Those were some of the statements that students between the ages of 14 and 19 presented during the final evaluation of Medioscopio, a project to teach media literacy and develop citizen reporters. On May 14, the inner courtyard of the Puerto Rico Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), in Santurce became the exhibition hall for these students’ final projects. For 13 consecutive Saturdays, the youngsters got up at 8 a.m. and went to the Gregorio Goyín Lanzó Cirino Community Center, in Parcelas Suárez in Loíza. The workshops, through this pilot project, supported by the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, in Spanish) and the MAC en el Barrio program were mostly offered there.