How a Pa IB Class Is Teaching Media Literacy

Led by IB English teacher Peter Frengel, students used the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart to track how the exact same events—from the U.S. government shutdown to high-profile political controversies—are framed across U.S. mainstream media, gaming forums, and AI-driven social ecosystems.

Frengel, who teaches IB Language and Literature, said media studies has long been part of his curriculum alongside traditional literary texts. “We study literary texts like Shakespeare and things like that,” he said. “But also our course is different because we’re supposed to study other types of texts and media is one of the things that we study. We study film, brochures, advertising, visual rhetoric.”

Over the past several years, Frengel has developed a media literacy project designed to help students navigate a fast-changing media landscape. This year, the project expanded beyond classroom discussion, with students creating a media studies guide to share their findings with a broader audience.

Rather than avoid controversial topics, Frengel encourages students to examine them from multiple angles. The class analyzed coverage of issues such as a government shutdown, the killing of Charlie Kirk and the demolition of the East Wing for a new ballroom expansion, comparing how different outlets presented the same facts.

Ava Rooney, an 11th grader, said she was struck by how bias can appear even in reporting that seems straightforward. “Even though they were telling the same story with the facts of how the event occurred, there was a lot of bias within that,” she said. She pointed to what the class identified as “selection and omission bias,” explaining that writers choose which details to emphasize and which to leave out to shape how readers interpret a story.

James Lang, also in 11th grade, examined how political discussions unfold in gaming communities and online forums such as Reddit. He said those spaces often present information in a conversational, informal tone that differs sharply from traditional news outlets. “A lot of these forums, when people talk about these certain events, they discuss it in a way that’s much more just like in conversation,” he said. “It’s more just like a day-to-day conversation.”

Using the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart as a guide, students examined mainstream outlets at the top of the chart, opinion-driven sources that skew left or right, and the growing influence of partisan media and social platforms. Frengel said they also discussed differences between for-profit and nonprofit news organizations and how corporate interests or advertiser pressures may influence framing.

“We purposely chose controversial stories,” Frengel said. The goal was not to push a particular viewpoint, but to help students understand how the broader media ecosystem functions. “Trying to see how people are framing them on both sides of the aisle, but also how corporate media versus maybe nonprofit media is framing the stories. And then what’s the buzz in social media? That became a very interesting part of the project.”

Visual rhetoric became a central focus as well. Rooney said she noticed how images and political cartoons can shape perception before a reader even begins the article. In coverage of Charlie Kirk’s killing, she found a series of political cartoons by artist Steve Brodner published in the days following the event. “I thought it was very interesting,” she said, noting that visuals offered a clear perspective alongside the written reporting.

Lang observed similar contrasts in coverage of the ballroom demolition, where some outlets featured images of cranes tearing into the structure and rubble strewn across the site, while others showcased polished renderings of the finished ballroom glowing in gold.

Frengel said those choices are far from neutral. “Those two images tell very different stories,” he said. “When you first click on it, what’s it already telling you before you even start reading the story? It’s already speaking from a certain point of view.”

For Frengel and his students, media literacy extends well beyond identifying misinformation. It is about understanding how headlines, visuals, algorithms and audience expectations interact to shape public perception. In a time of rapid technological change and political polarization, the class aims to equip students not just to consume media, but to question it thoughtfully and critically.