Current popular media literacy programs overemphasize the verifiability, reliability, and expertise of sources over the analysis of how marginalized groups are represented. This analysis privileges traditional news sources – and a hierarchy of “objective” news. These same institutions have been historically responsible for producing and reinforcing stereotypes and media injustices toward marginalized groups. These media literacy programs lack emphasis on how issues of race, oppression, and politics are represented in factually accurate sources. We demonstrate how an alternative model of critical media education can attempt to address issues of representation and media injustice within the contemporary global media ecosystem. We use two pedagogical examples to illustrate how critical media education, emphasizing both critical consumption and media production, may be used to help young people go beyond verifying news sources for accuracy to also critically analyze the perspectives and representations in these sources, and produce media to challenge these media injustices
