By Fiona Slusarev
Simply reading the news and logging on to social media has never been more precarious than in 2026. Individuals have to navigate around social media algorithms, manipulated content, deepfakes and generative AI to determine the truth.
Dr. Eric Jourgensen, a Palm Beach County teacher for 24 years, is taking time in the classroom to help students become better equipped to tackle this issue. Now, he is taking his methodology for teaching students media and news literacy to the national stage in October with a presentation at the 2026 National News Literacy Conference in Salt Lake City — and local residents can help support this effort.
An Acreage resident since the early 2000s, Jourgensen has used his doctorate in educational leadership and experience as an MTV stringer journalist to teach journalism and broadcast journalism at Palm Beach Central High School since 2020. As part of his journalism course, he shows students how to become “informed consumers” that don’t take headlines at face value, yet aren’t complete skeptics.
“It’s an informed skepticism,” Jourgensen explained. “You can look at a headline and say, ‘What do they want me to know? What are they trying to show me? What are they not showing me — either intentionally or unintentionally?’”
One of the strategies he uses with his students is the “dihydrogen monoxide” exercise where he demonstrates how easy it is to manipulate information. He begins the lesson by stating only true facts about the compound: It causes 100 percent of drowning deaths; it’s found in nuclear power plants; it generates corrosion; and more fear-inciting morsels. Naturally, students would assume this mysterious chemical is a hazard.
But Jourgensen then reveals “dihydrogen monoxide” is just water, regular H2O, which we need to live and use every day. While it’s true that water does cause drowning, is found in nuclear power plants and leads to corrosion, it is not the whole truth.
Jourgensen instills in his students the knowledge that the framing of how information is presented can be just as important as the information itself.
“If we’re not really fighting true or false, fake news or real news — if all the facts can be true, then how do we really look at this information? That’s the crux of the presentation,” he said.
He extrapolates further on this idea by giving students a framework to evaluate the credibility of any piece of news or media. Using the WATER acronym, Jourgensen encourages students to wait, ask, trace, examine and respond. Individuals should wait before reacting and notice their emotional response to the media. They need to ask themselves if there is evidence to back up the claim being asserted. Then they need to trace back the origin of the information and understand its context. All of the evidence, context, quality and framing, must be examined. Finally, they can respond by questioning, correcting, sharing or walking away from the media.
“The reason I thought of all this is [because] the only thing that really slows down speed is friction,” he said. “How can we apply friction online? The only thing that you can do is pause and wait. If everybody were to take five, 10, 15 seconds before they shared something and really thought about it, and slowed that dissemination of partial information, misinformation, whatever the case may be, that can help everybody as a whole.”
This lesson and the “dihydrogen monoxide” demonstration are what he will be presenting to educators from across the country at the National News Literacy Conference in Salt Lake City, presented by the News Literacy Project. The project is a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to working with teachers and school districts to ensure that students in every state receive news literacy instruction during their high school career. This inaugural conference brings together educators from around the nation to share expertise and knowledge about K-12 news literacy education.
Media and news literacy is especially important today, since news is coming to consumers at a constant, high-speed stream, according to Jourgensen. Current events aren’t just in a newspaper, magazine, or a morning and evening broadcast show; information is all around us all the time from online articles to Instagram algorithms and TikTok’s For You Page.
Jourgensen noted that while we might feel we have to make decisions quicker about media at this pace, we should actually pause to correctly evaluate its trustworthiness.
He hopes that the students who take his class leave knowing that asking questions is a good thing. And, looking to the future, Jourgensen is cautiously optimistic. He has experienced the so-called technological doomsdays before with the advent of internet search engines and Wikipedia, and watched students come out the other side. He believes that teaching responsible usage of AI is the best way forward, and that people, business and the government need to realize the good and bad in AI and place parameters on it.
“It is a tool and should be looked at and treated as that,” Jourgensen said of AI. “It shouldn’t be the whole toolbox.”
For more information on Jourgensen and his upcoming book, visit www.ericjourgensen.com.
To support Jourgensen’s journey to the 2026 National News Literacy Conference, visit www.gofund.me/da657c628. Meanwhile, learn more about the News Literacy Project at www.newslit.org.
