Algernon D’Ammassa: “A republic that doesn’t teach civics grows incoherent and will die.”  Algernon is a newspaper reporter, actor, and playwright. His “Desert Sage” opinion column appears on Fridays in the Deming Headlight, Las Cruces Sun News, and Silver City Sun News. The title of today’s discussion is from one of his recent articles. He will be doing a workshop called Storytelling Politics at the Southwest Festival of the Written Word in September.

We will be discussing the consequences of: the 140 characters or less format of communications in social media the current lack of civics education in our schools and U.S. culture, and the conversion of network news programming to entertainment thereby cutting the cost of journalistic investigation. Instead of reporting what is happening, the newscasters and guests are reduced to speculating about sensational things that “might” be happening.

Radio and TV’s current lack of in-depth reporting on social and political problems and the pros and cons of potential solutions. The internet makes vast amounts of valid and invalid information available to everyone. How do we create paths of truth through the forest? How can we improve upon the methods we use to filter out fact from fiction in what we see, hear, feel, and read?