Tough Times Tuesday is live. 🎉
Today, I use a news item from Colombia to offer a reflection on what's often missing in our news coverage.
Sometimes it helps to think about media literacy at a remove from the news cycles we're following at home--so hopefully looking at how the news reports on Petro's "Total Peace" can help clarify what's often missing in our own news ecosystems.
Are we given the data that best empowers us?
Or just data to scare, anger, and demoralize?
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/the-news-our-news-ecosystem-misses
Thank you for taking the time with it! Glad it was worth it.
@MLClark Good Tough times Tuesday!🌻☕️💙
@MLClark Thank you for the article. I enjoyed reading about the nuts-and-bolts of Colombian politics. Centrists always wind up being attacked by both extremes. The bane of those of us who just want to get stuff done.
Tearing down is easy! Building up is hard.
(And going "up" is, too, but apparently I have video of that to watch now! 🤗)
@MLClark Great article! It looks like there's a typo in this phrase: trend of decreasing employment and increasing employment.
Thanks for the catch!
Ah, yes, from El Colombiano. The problem with translating from Spanish is that there are so many structures that seem redundant in English - like saying "decreasing unemployment and increasing employment". An English-language editor would have knocked half of that away, but it doesn't sound as redundant in Spanish. Good catch on the missing "un-"!
@MLClark don't get me started on a rant about sloppy journalism and politics. I saw far too much of it during my days as an activist and organizer at the state and local levels.
When I was speaking publicly in that role, I was always cautious about answering because there were a lot of "gotcha" questions. Not based on ideology, but based on the principle of "if it bleeds, it leads." Looking for the sound bite--and this was in the early '80s.
@MLClark Wonderful again. Thank you!