Abstract

The main thrust of this study is to assess how the systematic biases found in mass media journalism affect the writing of history textbooks. There has been little attention paid to how the dissemination of select news information regarding the recent past, particularly from the 1990s through the War on Terror, influences the ways in which US history is taught in schools. This study employs a critical-historical lens with a media ecology framework to compare Project Censored’s annual list of censored and under-reported stories to the leading and most adopted high school and college US history textbooks. The findings reveal that historical narratives largely mirror corporate media reporting, while countervailing investigative journalism is often missing from the textbooks. This study demonstrates the need for critical media literacy inside the pedagogy of history education and teacher training programs in the US.

Highlights

  • Higdon et al.: Today’s Fake News is Tomorrow’s Fake History Today’s Fake News is Tomorrow’s Fake History: How US History Textbooks Mirror Corporate News Media Narratives

  • The main thrust of this study is to assess how the systematic biases found in mass media journalism affect the writing of history textbooks

  • The findings reveal that historical narratives largely mirror corporate media reporting, while countervailing investigative journalism is often missing from the textbooks

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Summary

Introduction

Higdon et al.: Today’s Fake News is Tomorrow’s Fake History Today’s Fake News is Tomorrow’s Fake History: How US History Textbooks Mirror Corporate News Media Narratives. The findings reveal that historical narratives largely mirror corporate media reporting, while countervailing investigative journalism is often missing from the textbooks. Media scholars note that with little available evidence of the war’s efficacy, public support for the War on Terror is maintained in-part through traditional news media ( referred to as corporate or establishment media) reporting.[6] Most famously, The New York Times' Judith Miller provided convincing, albeit false, reporting that gave justification for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Higdon et al.: Today’s Fake News is Tomorrow’s Fake History intelligence community, both of which were advocating for a US invasion of Iraq at the time, to claim that Iraq was procuring what were known as weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).[7] Her reporting was seen as vital for advancing public support for the US to invade Iraq, in order stop WMD production

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