SUMMARY
- Citing “rising misinformation and violent rhetoric online,” Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro in September 2025 visited a Dauphin County school to highlight the PA Department of Education’s Information and Media Literacy Toolkit, which would give teachers and students to identify misinformation
- Shapiro during the visit discussed the need to identify “hateful” or “extreme” language on the internet
- Fact-checking resources include one by the RAND Corporation and Common Sense Media, a nonprofit founded by Jim Steyer, the brother of billionaire and leftist donor Tom Steyer
- RAND urges internet users to consider resources such as the Global Disinformation Index, an organization that called for a blacklist of center-right news outlets
Gov. Josh Shapiro in September 2024 launched the Pennsylvania Information and Media Literacy Toolkit to combat “misinformation and violent rhetoric.” Amongst the recommended tools and organizations were outfits with a track record of undermining online free speech — a common feature of “media literacy” programs.
The Pennsylvania PA Information and Media Literacy Toolkit includes:
- The Digital Inquiry Group, a spinout out of the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG)
- Fact-Checking Tools for Teens and Tweens from Common Sense Media, nonprofit founded by Jim Steyer, the brother of billionaire and major leftist donor Tom Steyer
- Free Fact-Checking Sites for Students and Teachers from Tech Learning
- Tools that fight disinformation from RAND Organization
- Misinformation and Disinformation: Thinking Critically about Information Sources from College of Staten Island
- Understanding and Spotting False News from Texas A&M
The Fact-Checking Tools for Teens and Tweens from Common Sense Media is led by Jim Steyer, the brother of billionaire and major leftist donor Tom Steyer. Common Sense Media’s board of directors includes Julian Castro, President Barack Obama’s Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary.
The Common Sense Media lists Poynter and Snopes as two of the suggested fact-checking tools. Both have been critiqued for a partisan liberal slant. Snopes in particular has regularly been mired in censorship and bias controversies, including attempts to “fact check” satirical websites.
The RAND Corporation, whose revenue overwhelmingly relies on government grants and contracts, has praised Newsguard, a private company whose primary service is maintaining a blacklist of disfavored news outlets for the purpose of depriving them of advertising revenue.
“One of the best examples of a credibility-scoring tool is NewsGuard, which assigns reliability ratings to news sources. They offer a free browser extension for users, as well as licenses for advertisers and internet and mobile providers,” RAND wrote in a 2020 paper about building a database of web tools to fight disinformation online.
In 2021, RAND recommended that governments directly fund “counterdisinformation civil society work:”
Disinfo-countering NGO [nongovernmental organization] initiatives need to be financially supported. Trustworthy and operational NGO projects are urgently needed…. [T]hose organizations are heavily underfinanced and therefore it is more or less volunteer activities which cannot yield systematic professional results… Those projects need to work in national environments with a deep understanding of the national discourse and a high degree of credibility among journalists and security related institutions. Ukrainian StopFake.org is a good example of an engaged NGO. Each EU member state needs to have at least one nongovernmental institution which would conduct activities in this area on a daily basis with national relevance.
The very same paper also recommended expanded media literacy training to combat the influence of Russian and other disinformation sources.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education recommends multiple guides and manuals on information and media literacy, including the Biden-era State Department guide to Media Literacy.
Shapiro has also pursued policies that would further stifle free speech in the state.
Gov. Shapiro backed a bill that would expand the state’s anti-hate protections beyond race and religion to include sexual orientation, gender identity, age, and disability status.
He wrote, “Hate has no place in Pennsylvania. Glad that the House passed this bill across party lines to ensure that everyone feels welcome and safe in our Commonwealth.”
Michael Greer, the president of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, wrote that the bill “would create a new arbitrary system of wide-reaching criminal penalties that threaten Pennsylvania citizens.”
“These proposals could demonize and even blacklist those who hold opposing views on areas of sexuality, marriage, and what it means to be male and female. This is state-sanctioned discrimination in some of its worst forms,” he added.
Despite touting the potential of media literacy education to combat misinformation, Gov. Shapiro recently intervened to defend someone who infamously spread misinformation on national TV.
In September 22, 2025, Shapiro wrote that President Trump is undermining freedom of speech, citing the public pressure to remove television host Jimmy Kimmel from his show after he falsely said Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s assassin was a part of “MAGA.”
