Angelina Jolie starts show to help children spot fake news

Angelina Jolie and the BBC want to give young viewers tools to stop fake news.

The Maleficient star will executive produce BBC My World, a program that explains the stories behind news and offers facts and information that helps kids over the age of 13 make up their own minds on pressing international issues. It will tap the reporting of the BBC World Service and is a co-production with Jolie and Microsoft Education, reported Variety.



“As a parent, I am happy to be able to give my support to a program that aims to help children learn more about the lives of other young people around the world and connect to them to each other,” Jolie said in a statement. “I hope it will help children find the information and tools they need to make a difference on the issues that matter to them, drawing on the BBC World Service’s network of thousands of journalists and multiple language services around the world.”

The weekly half-hour program will be broadcast via BBC World News, the organisation’s most-watched channel. It will air each Sunday and its content will be shared with BBC’s 42 different language services. It will also be made available via a YouTube channel and the BBC iPlayer in the United Kingdom.

Producers see the show as a tool to help young audiences, who are allowed to roam on many social-media outlets yet have less of a grasp about how to distinguish content by levels of quality. “There’s a gap in provision for young people who want to understand how the news is made and the values that stand behind it. They need the tools to distinguish the real from the false online, and the skills to think critically about information, wherever they encounter it,” says Jamie Angus, director of BBC World Service Group, in a statement. “Nurturing these abilities is the aim of My World, and they’re crucial for today’s young people, not just for personal development but the future health of global democracy. The BBC World Service is uniquely placed to provide a truly global perspective on the biggest stories and themes of the day.”



Radzi Chinyanganya, currently a presenter for BBC Sport, and formerly a presenter for the BBC’s flagship children’s program Blue Peter, and Nomia Iqbal, who anchors BBC Asian Network’s The Big Debate, a show centered on arts and culture, will anchor the program. In one episode, Chinyanganya examines video manipulation and gets “deep-faked” while in another, Iqbal travels to the Amazon rain forest to investigate whether it can survive an onslaught from logging, oil and mineral extraction and farming.

Each broadcast will be accompanied by a learning segment and lesson plans will be made available through Microsoft Education.

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