Award-winning international business journalist Sissel McCarthy is a Distinguished Lecturer and Director of the Journalism Program at Hunter College and founder of NewsLiteracyMatters.com, an online platform dedicated to teaching people how to find credible information in this digital age. She has been teaching news literacy and multimedia reporting and writing for more than 16 years at Hunter College, NYU, and Emory University following her career as an anchor and reporter at CNN and CNBC. McCarthy serves on the board of the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents.

CNN, PBS, GPTV, and CNBC are among the media outlets you have worked as a journalist covering international business and politics. In the last decade, you managed the journalism program at Hunter College. Teaching journalism is quite different from practicing journalism. How difficult or easy was it for you to make that transition?

Journalists are almost universally great storytellers but not always great teachers. Fortunately, when I started teaching at Emory University in 2004, I had two wonderful mentors who taught me everything from organizing a semester-long course and grading assignments to managing a classroom. A more significant challenge was learning how to shoot and edit video—two skills I never needed as the anchor of CNN International's flagship business program, World Business Today, or in any of my other jobs. When I went into the field to report a story (back in the good old days!), I would work with a producer, one or two videographers, and an editor, so I never learned those technical skills.

In 2004, when I started as an adjunct, backpack journalism was sweeping the industry, and I had to teach myself how to shoot and edit video through trial and error. I have great empathy for students learning anything new, and I am still trying to keep up with all the technical innovations in our industry—not an easy task. By far, the best part of the job is getting to know my students and being a part of their journey. They are truly a source of joy and inspiration. And as my children often remind me, teaching is the perfect job for me since I am paid to tell people what to do and how to do it.

You brought a new element to the study in the journalism department at Hunter College: news literacy. How can a journalist become literate in the news?

News literacy is my passion and could not be more critical given all the misinformation and disinformation polluting our information ecosystem. We have entered an era of "alternative facts" where distrust of all information is rapidly becoming the prevailing view. This kind of thinking, combined with extreme partisanship and social media algorithms that value engagement over truth, is a real threat to our society and democracy.

To answer your question, journalists already have the tools to be news literate consumers even if they don't realize it. And the research backs this up. Stanford University published a study in 2017 about digital literacy that revealed how well prepared and trained journalists are to judge the credibility of information they find online. They based this conclusion on numerous experiments, including one in which they asked 45 people to evaluate the credibility of an actual website on the minimum wage. This experiment pitted 25 Stanford undergraduates and 10 Ph.D. history professors against 10 journalists. They asked them to evaluate the trustworthiness of the information posted on www.minimumwage.com. They discovered the undergrads, and most of the professors stayed on the site and read "vertically," meaning they never left that website and did a close textual analysis of what was written. They also focused on the site's aesthetics and assumed the information was already vetted because it looked legitimate.

Meanwhile, the professional journalist fact-checkers took a completely different approach and immediately opened another tab in their browser to find out who was behind this information. In less than a minute, they all figured out this site was backed by a fiscally conservative think tank hired by the restaurant industry to keep the minimum wage as low as possible. While all the journalists made the connection, only 20% of the Stanford students and 40% of the history professors figured it out without help. And it took them twice as long.

Fact-checking is intrinsic to news reporting and gives journalists a huge head start in becoming and staying news literate. It also means they have a unique opportunity to educate the public by sharing how they fact-check information in their stories. Being transparent about how information is vetted in a story will build credibility in the news industry and an appreciation for fact-checking and accurate information. The public is woefully unprepared to navigate digital media, and we all need to do what we can to teach people, especially our young people, to become more critical news consumers.

Can you tell if someone will become a great journalist by how they interact in the classroom as a student?

I'll be honest, some students stand out from the moment you meet them, especially the natural-born writers, but these classroom superstars are not always future journalists. It takes a lot more than good writing to become a reporter, and students who are hard-working, ethical, empathetic, and naturally curious are most often the ones who become great journalists. In fact, the quality I admire most in my Hunter students is their determination to succeed. I think that trait is a better predictor of success than any college GPA and have several former students who were not straight “A” students but went on to incredibly successful journalism careers.

In a recent article at News Literacy Matters, you wrote about anonymous sources and if a story with these types of sources can be trusted. Do stories built on anonymous sources undercut trust in the news media and its credibility?

There is an epidemic of anonymous sources in journalism, and the short answer is yes, they do undermine the public's trust in journalism.

Here's a longer answer: As I wrote on NewsLiteracyMatters.com, a reporter who uses anonymous sources has a much heavier lift when it comes to establishing a story's credibility. All reporters prefer to use named sources in their stories because information attached to a specific person is more credible and easily verified. But stories involving national security, corruption, or an abuse of power often lead reporters to sources who could lose their jobs, freedom, or even their lives for sharing what they know. In these exceptions, anonymous sources are entirely defensible.

The reporter, though, has an obligation to explain to the public why there is an anonymous source and why the unnamed status is warranted. The source should also be described in a way that establishes the person's credibility without revealing their identity, and the information they share should be corroborated, if possible, with an on-the-record source.

When reporters handle anonymous sources this way, most Americans support the practice. According to a Pew Research poll, 82% of people surveyed say that there are times when it is acceptable for journalists to use anonymous sources.

In an era where the journalism industry is shrinking, and anyone can claim to be a journalist, what do you tell someone asking why studying journalism is essential?

I disagree a bit with the premise of the question. Yes, the number of traditional news outlets is shrinking, and local news is on life support, but news consumption rose sharply last year thanks to the pandemic and the election. According to Nielsen, U.S. adults now spend more than 12 hours a day connected to some form of media. This is an excellent opportunity for the news industry and our next generation of journalists. I love to talk to students about the many new ways to tell stories and reach audiences, such as Substack, a newsletter platform that started in 2018 and now has one million subscribers.
Most importantly, I tell my students that journalism is still a worthy calling. Many of the key responsibilities are the same as they always were: Holding power to account and being a voice for the voiceless. But the stakes seem even higher now, thanks to the fake news epidemic. Our democracy relies on journalists to supply people with the information they need to be free and self-governing. When the public cannot agree on a common set of facts, the consequences can be grave, even lethal, as we learned on January 6th.

Journalism is the first line of defense against forces that seek to undermine the exchange of fact-based information. There is no substitute for a free press.