A new poll found that a majority of Americans say misinformation spurs extremism and hate. Nolan Higdon, a national Project Censored judge, professor, media scholar, and author offers a unique take on this important topic. He reports that misinformation or fake news has been around forever. We need to figure out how to teach people to spot it and that necessitates media literacy education. He also explains how citizens should not empower others to determine the veracity of information for us, we need media literacy education to empower citizens to do it for themselves. That is the core belief of democracy. Higdon is a lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. Higdon’s areas of concentration include digital culture, news media history, and critical media literacy. He has been featured in The NY Times, CNBC and the San Francisco Chronicle.