CHARLES SALTER: Now as a country, we actually live in different information realities and that's got to change.

And there have been studies that have shown that when folks are exposed to different media outlets than what they normally watch, their opinions broaden and sometimes change on a subject.

And so that takes us back to the importance of news literacy and why we should start there, to help people start to at least enter back into that civic dialog with at least a shared set of facts and understanding of what is true and what is not.

We will always disagree.

I think when you look at the history of the country, one could make an argument.

There's very few times that we've been totally united as a country.

I don't think we need to to set as a goal for ourselves, “Let's stop fighting and arguing about things.” That's the nature of democracy.

That's why we're all here.

But we're no longer even talking about the same thing when we're arguing with each other.

And that is not sustainable.

And so I think news literacy can really help people move past that.

One thing I do want to say about that, that is concerning in a small town in Virginia and in states across the country, actually everywhere are these areas that we consider news deserts, where there is no local journalism anymore.

And that is actually one of the greater tragedies that when you have a local newspaper and you know who's running that paper in your county or your town, you're much more likely to believe it than a paper that is produced in a very large city very far away, or a news program of people that you will never meet.

And so that's also, again, I said, there's many solutions.

There's many things that we need to address.

That's actually something that the News Literacy Project, just as an aside, is beginning to champion as well, that we need to champion the local news that exists but help rebuild, our local news infrastructure as well.