Should we be teaching media literacy to everyone? And if so, how should we go about it? Once again these questions come to mind as I consider a request to offer still another course about the consequences of media for undergraduate honors college students. The issues certainly are endless:
*So much news today is virtually unedited, and facts go unchecked.
*Too many people select their news sources to reinforce their biases.
*When politicians and extremists repeat lies over and over again they begin to sound true.
*Words such as “democracy,” and phrases such as “breaking news,” lose their meaning when so many manipulative people misuse them every day.
*One-way communication always breaks down, and the result is constant rumor and misunderstanding.
*More communication is not necessarily better in an already information saturated world.
*Television news images look real, but they too often mislead.
*Social media effectively mobilizes action, but rarely provides real substance.
*Many young people may be losing human intimacy capabilities through excessive texting and social media.
And the list goes on. Most of these issues are not new to us. Even so, we go about our daily lives thinking very little about the psychic and social consequences of our media obsessed world. So, should we be teaching media literacy? And if so, where and how do we go about it?
Larry D. Lauer 
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