Conflicts, crises and struggles appear into the news media without much context. This is for two reasons. First, the compression of space – the brevity of a television news report or of the print media’s 300 word story – prevents any broad context from being offered to a readership which might not know how to assess a conflict, crisis or struggle. Second, the ideology of the governing class is one that proceeds with the premise that too much depth would give people too much understanding of how the world works. Far better to have a ‘free media’ that merely skims the surface, if it at all reports on a story. Shallow news reports saturated with corrosive ideological implications are what is on offer particularly when a crisis strikes. Events appear as a sudden crisis with no history.
From the Tricontinental, each month, we will produce a brief dossier on a current event that we believe requires some elaboration. These dossiers will provide a short anti-imperialist history of the crisis, offer interviews with key experts on the region and on the issue at stake and provide human stories of the people who are at the heart of the crisis.
To suggest crises that need elaboration or to offer information as well as stories for these events, please contact us at [email protected].
