As part of regular secondary school assignments, children should be required to read newspaper articles about news events on all scales from the local to the international at age appropriate levels. They should also be taught to analyze and critique the reporting of both historical and current news stories by reading between the lines and by searching for errors or gaps in reporting and to identify slanted or biased news coverage.

They should be taught the corrective skills of making an incomplete or biased article balanced by rewriting it and removing or adding bits of information in order to balance or negate any bias and make it fair. Apart from students learning about several different subjects through these readings, like the workings of government, history, modern scientific discoveries, crime and punishment, natural disasters, and more, they would also learn some writing skills like how to construct interesting sentences and stories and how to write more precisely while always keeping an eye towards anticipating counterarguments and closing loopholes in their own writings. Importantly, students should be taught multitudes of examples of stories printed or broadcast in the media in which the reporter left out critical or important information resulting in a story that was wrong or misleading. Students should also learn how to criticize an author’s use of facts and evaluate such facts for their relevance, accuracy, and fairness to the implied or stated conclusion.