GREAT FALLS — MTN News is once again promoting news literacy during National News Literacy Week (January 24-28). The week is dedicated to highlighting the challenge and importance of being able to tell fact from fiction in the news.
Great Falls High School students in the Business Professionals Association (BPA) have been working for weeks create a mock newscast, a project they say has been an eye-opening experience.
"In the actual broadcast, I was the field correspondent,” said junior Hannah Wyman.
"In the video, I was an anchor,” junior Shania Van Spyk said.
"I did some of the voiceovers,” sophomore Chad Wyman said.
At the start of the week, the students were working to put some final touches on their mock newscast for their BPA club competition.
"Our first year, and this year, we got to go into the studio and kind of see how things actually work,” Hannah said.
"We didn't have a mic. We were planning on ordering one but we never got the time to,” Van Spyk said when asked what was the most challenging part of creating the newscast. "Timing, we were all busy with other stuff."
So, how do they determine what's fake news and what's not?
"I think it's hard to trust, especially now. It's a lot more informed that there's a lot of fake news and it's a lot more public,” Chda said. "I feel like anything that can highlight an agenda instead of just informing people would be fake news."
For full transparency, the team asked KRTV to work with them a little on their newscast. That included a discussion about what to think about when deciding what content to include.
“(The discussion) kind of gave us another perspective to go off of, perspective I've never had before on what type of things you want to include in the news and what type of things are just not that important. News is supposed to give you what you need,” said Hannah.
