Members of the Daily He(a)rd public relations campaign for the News Literacy Project pose for a photo on Feb. 21, 2023. Left to right: Bailey Ghashghai, Halena Wetch, Oriel Voegele and Erin Bauman. (Gabbie Burton/CU Independent)
The Daily He(a)rd, a group of five University of Colorado Boulder public relations and advertising students, aims to improve media literacy in the CU community by educating audiences on how to combat misinformation.
The team is a part of the Public Relations Student Society of America’s (PRSSA) Bateman Case Study Competition, where over 70 teams from around the nation run a public relations campaign for the same client. This year’s chosen client, News Literacy Project, is a nonpartisan education non-profit founded in 2008 that works to increase news literacy in America.
“We’re trying to encourage news literacy without making it a polarized topic because, ultimately, it’s your right to be informed and educated,” said Halena Wetch, a member of The Daily He(a)rd team.
The team’s campaign is using the hashtag #stoptherumorripple in an effort to make media literacy more accessible. By sharing materials and tactics provided by the News Literacy Project, the campaign hopes to empower CU students and community members to help identify and stop the spread of misinformation and disinformation.
For CU Boulder students, the Bateman Competition is a yearlong class that gives them practical experience applying their classroom knowledge to real clients’ campaigns. According to senior Oriel Voegele, students who are members of PRSSA can apply to take the class and are later selected to take part in the competition.
“You [need] to have the drive because it is very competitive and very challenging,” Voegele said.
This year’s class has two teams competing in the Bateman Competition: The Daily He(a)rd and False Creative Communications. False Creative Communications is promoting the News Literacy Project’s mission through the use of their hashtag #thinkb4ushare.
The two CU teams, which include four to six students, must compete separately, meaning they can’t share research or strategies.
The competition challenges students by asking them to connect with a traditionally hard-to-reach demographic. False Creative Communications chose to focus on reaching rural audiences, while The Daily He(a)rd decided to focus on reaching the Latino population.
“We are translating some of our materials and some of the News Literacy Project’s materials into Spanish,” said Erin Bauman, the co-president of PRSSA’s Boulder chapter and a member of the Daily He(a)rd team.
The Daily He(a)rd has partnered with the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR) to raise awareness about the difference between abortion clinics and “crisis pregnancy centers,” facilities that do not offer some reproductive healthcare options and attempt to convince pregnant people to not get abortions.
According to Bauman, COLOR calls attention to how the Latina population has been the focus of targeted messages about deceptive pregnancy and abortion resources, mainly due to the language barrier.
“After talking to COLOR, we found out that this is an issue occurring right on CU’s campus under our nose,” Wetch said. “We didn’t even recognize how it is affecting the Latina population.”
For example, Wetch referenced the Boulder Campus Cash coupon book, a booklet of coupons and advertisements for local businesses distributed for free on campus. This year’s book included a Boulder Pregnancy Resource Center advertisement claiming to offer “compassionate help, professional medical care and accurate information” to any who may need it. However, it neglected to mention that the center doesn’t offer abortion services.
A disclaimer found on the bottom of the center’s website states that it “does not offer or refer for pregnancy terminations or birth control.” The website also states that the center is a member of Care Net, a Christian nonprofit organization that operates a network of “pregnancy centers.” This information is also not provided in the coupon book advertisement.
“That really hit home for us,” Wetch said. “That’s why we decided it would be best to work with COLOR because they are solving an issue that involves misinformation and directly affects our campus and our communities.”
Guests sit in at the Avanti Food and Beverage weekly “Smarty Party” trivia night on Feb. 21, 2023. The Daily He(a)rd, a student-run public relations campaign, collaborated with the eatery for the night. (Gabbie Burton/CU Independent)
In addition to their active social media presence, The Daily He(a)rd is focusing their campaign on in-person events in Boulder. On Feb. 21, the team collaborated with Avanti Food and Beverage on Pearl Street for the restaurant’s weekly “Smarty Party” trivia night. On Sunday, March 5, they also hosted a screening of the media literacy documentary film “Trust Me” at the Bohemian Biergarten.
Although The Daily He(a)rd’s campaign was created specifically for the Bateman Competition, which will wrap up in May, the members said that they feel passionate about their mission and the work they are doing in the CU community beyond this.
“There’s so much information out there, so we basically want to give people the tools and the confidence to be able to know what they can trust online,” Wetch said.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Gabbie Burton at gabrielle.burton@colorado.edu.
