SUTTON, Mass. - In this class, students are taught to fact-check, double-check and to always use more than one source.  

Cameron Loss teaches journalism to students at Sutton High School and with less than 50 days until the presidential election, they’re getting a crash course in beating bias.  

“Like everyone else, I have my own opinion and beliefs but at the same token, as a journalist that doesn’t matter," Loss said. “What matters is telling the truth.”

The truth can sometimes be hard to come by, especially on social media. Learning how to spot what’s fake can help students in their own reporting for the school paper and can also be helpful when it comes time to cast a ballot.

“I think it was a photo that I saw online of Trump evading police that was completely AI generated,” senior Connor Anderson said. “When I saw it, at first I was like, wait that’s actually fake?”

This class of Gen Z students can agree, most of their friends and peers aren’t invested in politics, the candidates or where they stand on major issues.  

“I follow politics some of the time, I’ll see it on the news in the morning if my parents have it on,” freshman Emma Fiore said. 

“Some people are invested, but I think more people are just focused on their daily lives,” senior Sean Hicks said. 

“All of my friends are like yeah, I’m going to vote for this random social media person online,” Anderson said. 

Anderson is among the few students in class who can vote this year. He’s watched the debate and said he’s just now deciding what matters to him. 

“I’m kind of sick of paying $4 for gas and $5 for a little bag of chips,” Anderson said. 

For other students, they said some issues important to them aren’t being addressed by either candidate. 

“I think climate change needs to be brought up a bit more,” Fiore said. “Neither candidate really spoke in detail about a plan for dealing with that.”

In the classroom, Loss said his most valuable lesson is the more you know now, the better you’ll be later and students like Anderson, who can now sort through the truth, said voters his age should take it seriously.  

“I’m now a lot more excited than I was because it’s a lot bigger decision than most kids my age make it to be,” he said. “If every single kid in every single Massachusetts school that can vote votes, that is going to make a big impact in our state.”