With the subject of fake news so prevalent in politics, Oswego State will be offering a course focused on evaluating news sources during the fourth quarter of the spring semester.

The course, ENG 395, is titled Evaluating News Sources: Good, Bad, and Fake. Two sections will be offered and the one-credit class begins in March after spring break. There are no pre-requisites to take the class. The sections are currently about halfway full and the English professors teaching it are encouraging students from all majors to enroll.

One of these professors, Michael Murphy, said the class will be beneficial for any students who want to better participate in civic discourse.

“I think we all need to be effective citizen readers,” Murphy said. “We need to be able to evaluate the news that we all get pretty much 24/7.”

Murphy said faculty were inspired to offer this course because of current events. President Donald Trump’s tweets have included the term “fake news” multiple times in the last few days.

“Give the public a break,” one of Trump’s recent tweets read. “The FAKE NEWS media is trying to say that large scale immigration in Sweden is working out just beautifully. NOT!”

Another tweet accused the media of lying, saying, “FAKE NEWS media, which makes up stories and ‘sources,’ is far more effective than the discredited Democrats- but they are fading fast!”

Last week, Trump called out mainstream news organizations as “fake news,” including The New York Times, CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC, calling them “the enemy of the American People!”

A Pew Research study found the millennial view on national news media has grown more negative. Only 27 percent of millennials believe the media has a positive impact on society.

But fake news stories have been getting more attention. Buzzfeed found that in the last three months of the U.S. presidential campaign, fake election news stories on Facebook had more engagement than news stories from major news outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The 20 top-performing fake election stories from “hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs” got 8,711,000 shares, reactions and Facebook comments in those final three months. The 20 top-performing election stories from 19 major news websites got only 7,367,000 shares, reactions and comments.

This response to major news organizations from the president motivated Murphy and other faculty to move forward with their course.

“I find it troubling the degree that the current administration seems to want to undermine faith in news and truth and the possibility of facts,” Murphy said.

The class will likely include learning about theory, readings on evaluating resources and a workshop where students can bring in news stories they find interesting to discuss.

Murphy said, in his class, students will likely lead a discussion based on readings.

Faculty have the ability to develop a one-time course without any review outside of their own department, according to Associate Provost Rameen Mohammadi.

Robert Early will be teaching the other section of the course. He emphasized that the course is non-partisan.

“It’s not an anti-Trump class,” Early said. “But certainly what’s inspired it, what made me want to teach the class, is that it’s really terrifying that we have a president that’s so consistently and clearly lying and doesn’t seem to be at all troubled by that.”

Early said Trump’s denial of mainstream media is dangerous for the country.

“Trump is propagating the idea that there’s no one you can trust, no one’s telling the truth in the media, don’t believe any of the media,” Early said. “That translates to ‘just listen to him,’ and that’s a threat to democracy.”

Early said this course will equip students to take part in democracy effectively.

“Democracy relies on people being able to have honest conversations with each other,” Early said. “If we can’t agree on basic facts, we can’t have any kind of meaningful conversation.”

Both professors said they hope the course will continue to be offered in future semesters.

Murphy said he wants to see the class count as a general education requirement so students are exposed to ideas of evaluating news before they graduate from college.

“If we could be sure that nobody graduated from SUNY Oswego believing that Hillary Clinton ran a baby sex ring out of a pizza parlor or some other sort of outlandish and entirely unfounded story…that would be a good thing,” Murphy said.

Though ENG 102 professors have focused on contemporary social and political issues in the past, this course is unique because news is the focus, Murphy said.

The course sections meet Monday and Wednesday at 1:50 p.m. and Tuesday and Thursday at 9:35 a.m.