Diversify Your Media – aka “Why Isn’t This on the News?!” is a Lazy LIE

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I have one thing to say about news coverage in social media, and I’m only going to say it once. Diversify your media. Expand your frwaking news sources.

Do you know what I’m tired of hearing?

“wow [insert terrible world event here] has been happening and theres NO MEDIA COVERAGE!! But Notre Dame was all over the news!! So messed upppp omg!!” 

I’m sorry, but this is, unfortunately, not something you can totally blame on social media. No. Not this time. 

Because that statement right there, my friend, is a lie.

It’s time you take a very raw and honest look – internally.

For one, you can stop saying that there is no coverage.

Because, first of all, yes. There IS media coverage. How do you even think YOU heard about it? From a NEWS SOURCE. Just because YOU aren’t seeing it immediately as it’s happening, that doesn’t mean the coverage is not there and available for media consumption. 

But maybe you’re not ready to accept the cold hard facts yet. It’s okay, I’ll walk you through the steps of how to diversify your media and finally get rid of these fake woke phrases from your life. It’s a super easy, super simple four-step program. Afterwhich, you will have leveled up your social media awareness, one well-rounded selection of media sources at a time.

This self-help guide is mostly for us Westerners, because “Western” media is often what “woke” Westerners wag their accusatory finger at. But everyone is welcome to read, reflect, and respond! Let’s get started, shall we? 

Diversify your Media Step 1: Realization – “Why is this the first time I’m hearing about such a big event?”

You log onto Instagram and you see someone’s story about modern-day slavery in Eritrea! WHAT?!  Then you look at the date and see the article was published a month ago!! AND IT’S BEEN GOING ON RIGHT UNDER EVERYONE’S NOSES?!? 

Everyone should be talking about this instead of some dumb dating show on an island!! No one has heard of it! No one is sharing it!! Why don’t global issues like this show up on television instead of Florida man stories?? Media should care more!! 

Well. Here’s where the first step begins.

Unlearning: The news doesn’t revolve around YOU. 

Yeah, that’s right bub. I said it. Global news doesn’t care about you. Especially not YOU SPECIFICALLY, sitting thousands of miles away scrolling through your Twitter highlights at a red light.

But you know what global news DOES care about? The people down the street from the event. The environment that surrounds the event. Global news cares about the lives that are directly impacted. THAT’S their immediate target audience. 

You aren’t always the audience.

If you don’t live there, or have a personal connection, guess what? You’re probably not going to be the emergency contact when a local political activist in x-country is jailed (or worse) without trial. When a city floods and is left without power for weeks in x-country, the first action in the crisis management procedure isn’t to make sure some millennial on the Santa Monica pier sees the housing update. 

It’s okay to not be personally involved in every major news headline. You aren’t ignorant because you hear about something weeks after it occurred, especially an event in another country. ESPECIALLY on another continent. That’s literally how news works – it’s radial y’all. 

Unlearning: You don’t regularly invest time in the news. 

Be honest. How much time do you dedicate to reading the news? Like, ACTUALLY read the news? And I’m not talking about headlines that manage to pop up on your Instagram stories. If you don’t take time to sit down and digest the news, then you can’t expect it to just fall into your lap every time, especially for news events that don’t directly impact you. 

So you didn’t hear about the rainforest burning while you swiped past Tik Tok videos? REALLY??? Don’t blame Western media for that one. If you really want to be more up to date on news articles, YOU have to put in the time. Sit down and actually read through an article instead of blazing past a headline. Subscribe to a news blog. Download a news app on your phone and read through it while you’re on the toilet. Yanno – diversify your media and then actually ingest it.

Maybe then you might actually hear about some big global event. 

Unlearning: You only get news from one source

You know what they say about media, right?

There’s always an agenda.

More often than not, a story is told with a bias to sway the reader’s perception of the recollection of events. That’s normal. Then there are sources that hold a less biased approach, and they are more concerned with informing about the event than analyzing it. That’s also normal. But you know what isn’t normal? The media telling a story that doesn’t connect with their target audience. 

That’s why you need to diversify your media. 

No matter how often you refresh your newsletter homepage, you’re only getting a small snippet of the news. News that THAT SPECIFIC SOURCE thinks its readers care about the most. So naturally there will be gaps in your news coverage. 

But who is to blame?

In the words of Hazaarthebazaar, “We are given the media we ASK FOR.”

You know how social media works on an algorithm? Well if you don’t, apps like Facebook and Instagram prioritize content that it thinks you want to see. Friends that you talk to regularly appear first. Rando strangers that you haven’t spoken to in years…well, they rarely make it to the top of your feed.

The same goes for real-world media. All your little clicks and google searches contribute to what your local media sources think you want to see. Collectively, Westerners are more concerned with many Western events, so that is largely what the media will show them. And that makes sense. Because there’s a personal connection there. 

So if you deep dive into the news every morning, but you’re only looking at one source, then you’re only getting information that ONE source values as relevant. Which I’m sure it is, biases ignored, but it isn’t very well rounded. Find news sources that are local (because those are super important), but also do the legwork to find sources that cover a more global view of world events and issues.

Be self-reflective and improve your news sources from the inside first. 

Good? Good.

Diversify your Media Step 2: Deflecting – “BUT THEY CARED SO MUCH ABOUT A DUMB BUILDING.” 

You’ve done some work. You’ve made solid progress to diversify your media sources. Great! But now, it seems like everywhere you turn you notice other people making the same misinformed claims you once did. And what’s more infuriating, is that everyone jumped on the Notre Dame bandwagon when it burned, an event in which no one was killed, the artwork was saved, and their is literally a digital blueprint of the building so it can be reconstructed. People changed their facebook profile pictures to have the french flag in the background. You had to read caption after caption of Rebecca’s high school field trip to Paris. 

They’re doing ALL THAT, but not one mention of the increasing discrimination against Muslims in Myanmar after the Rohingya crisis. Or the children in concentration camps! OR THE FACT THAT WONI SPOTTS IS THE FIRST BLACK WOMAN TO VISIT EVERY COUNTRY !!

But all they care about is A BUILDING?!??!? How are people SO DENSE?

Unlearning: People can care about two things at once. 

Fun fact – empathy is not a limited resource. As it turns out, people CAN be sad about a building AND the world hunger epidemic. On that same note, they can be interested in celebrity gossip, and still follow political campaigns. Indulging in trashy television and shade channels doesn’t mean someone can’t be equally involved in dismantling systematic oppression.

People are complex. Yeah, it’s a thing. So let’s just get that out of the way and not assume just because someone is passionate about a topic not surrounded by death, plague, and famine that they can’t be informed on those issues as well.

Unlearning: There are varying levels of connection and understanding of a place 

So you want to know WHY everyone shared memories of Notre Dame instead of any of the bazillon other options of world tragedies happening at any given time?

It’s because there’s a personal connection there. For many people in the Western world, myself included, Notre Dame was a pivotal memory in their lives. Fo me, it was my first experience traveling. Standing in front of Notre Dame, holding my charity-given passport and the 100 euros I had to sell essay papers to get…it was a moment that felt like freedom. So seeing that burn was, understandable, emotional for me and many others. Sure the European agenda is pushed very hard, but Notre Dame is undeniably a globally recognized site.

On the other hand, countless world heritage sites are being destroyed in Iraq and Syria for the past several years. Both regions have some of the oldest and most intact archeological sites, mosques, churches, and museums, and they are being ransacked, pillaged, and desecrated. Like, UNESCO considers the intentional destruction of cultural heritage a LITERAL war crime.

Where’s the coverage? – you may be asking yourself.

There is coverage, but as Westerners, the vast majority of us are not familiar with the complexities of conflicts in the Middle East, especially when it doesn’t necessarily include our involvement. The same is true for…well, basically anywhere outside of North America or Europe. It’s just how our education is set up, not to mention our media disproportionally overrepresents and prioritizes Western news.

So keeping those two aspects in mind, more background knowledge on the histories of certain Western countries as well as a stronger personal connection and understanding of these places, along with more exposure to its events, it might be easier to grasp people are more willing to engage with topics like Brexit over protests in Haiti. When you diversify your media, it will certainly help on the exposure end, but we’re all naturally more likely to interact and break down subjects and situations that we more easily grasp. So even if someone knows about the political unrest in a certain South American country, they might not speak on it because they aren’t equipped to.

Unlearning: Don’t compare tragedies

Unfortunately, it seems like one of the learning curves in becoming a more aware person is to sometimes compare tragedies to make some sort of point. Usually, someone playing the Devil’s Advocate, but it can also happen when someone very passionate about an event that is not widely shared in “mainstream” media. Often, it is in response to a tragic event in a minority or non-white community getting overshadowed by a tragic event in a white community. But not always.

“Less people died than in ______”

“Yeah that event was sad, BUT NOT AS SAD AS ____”

“Why does everyone care so much about ____? ____ IS WAY WORSE!!”

In short, don’t compare tragedies, especially in the loss of someone’s life or livelihood. It’s insensitive, tacky, and not cute. Just because you are more personally moved by one tragedy does not make another tragedy less moving for someone else.

Unlearning: People have different reactions to news

On a similar note, not everyone reacts the same to certain topics. Some people are more willing to share awareness around gun violence or mass shootings, but less comfortable sharing domestic abuse or sexual assault. Either for personal reasons or just lack of adequate vocabulary in the topic, or a thousand other reasons, IT IS COMPLETELY OKAY NOT TO SHARE EVERYTHING THAT MOVES YOU.

Just because they didn’t change their profile picture to navy blue doesn’t mean they don’t know or care about Sudan. So, while from your point of view there may not be visible social media sharing from your end, people could very well be aware of the event on a much larger scale than is “visible.” Sharing news on social media, especially traumatic news, is exhausting. People are human. And sometimes people just want a trauma-free day and would rather like videos of cats doing yoga than the picture of a drowned refugee. A hashtag or instagram feed post doesn’t determine their awareness.

Also, sometimes people don’t share their personal opinion on certain topics because it will negatively impact their career or well-being. People in government jobs cannot always be open to their honest thoughts on certain policies. In other cases, it could be damaging to someone to comment on their stance on political issues, because they could be punished. So stop asking people in Hong Kong to publically post their local opinion about the protests. So while it would be helpful to YOU (and others), it could put the person at risk. Be understanding of that.

Diversify your media, but also realize that people can discuss, digest, and direct news outside of social media as well.

Diversify your media Step 3: Effectively sharing a tragedy

So you’ve taken steps to diversify your media and you understand why certain news events don’t gather as much attention in “your sphere” of the internet. Great! Now…what exactly are you supposed to do with this information?

If you want to share it with others (and maybe bring more awareness of the topic in your circle), that’s certainly admirable! But…this can certainly be done in a problematic way if you aren’t careful. But, don’t let the edgy social justice activists fool you.

No one is 100% * ~ * W O K E * ~ *

We are unique, each and every one of us. We come from different communities, and thus, different understandings of communities outside of our own. It can be easy to fall into a rabbit-hole of “informing the public,” where the lines between overstepping your opinions are blurry.

To help prevent this, try to always ask yourself the “Who/Why/How”s of your sharing methods.

Method 1: Who

In theory, you should know your audience. So, you should be familiar with how to communicate effectively with them. If your audience are people mainly versed in the topic or subject, for example speaking to group of toxicologists about EPA findings, by all means, get technical. But if your audience aren’t field experts on the subject, you NEED to present the message in a relatable way.

Using terminology and lingo that your audience doesn’t understand essentially nullifies your information and, frankly, makes you look either condescending or arrogant. Most likely both.

But being relatable to your audience DOESNT MEAN “dumbing it down” EITHER. If you can’t explain the situation to someone in a method they can understand, then maybe you shouldn’t assume the role of educator. Shoutout someone that can break down the complexities for them so that they are able to digest the information.

Method 1: Why

Ask yourself why you are sharing. Do you actually feel strongly, or do you just want to seem like an informed/woke person? Are you just virtue signaling? Which is, doing the visible motions of helping, but not ACTUALLY doing the background work for it, so you get the praise for it? I mean, you shouldn’t automatically feel shamed if you don’t particularly feel moved to tears about a place you have never heard of before. It’s unrealistic to think you have the exact same level of unwavering passion for EVERY SINGLE THING.

Be honest with yourself. One, because if you share, you should be able to follow up if anyone has questions or ask for resources. Have the motivation to offer something deeper than a headline title if prompted. If you are just sharing to seem informed, then you’re really just thinking about yourself.

At the very least, share someone ELSE’s post that would give a more well-rounded understanding and insight into the situation. An “omg so sad” post or changing your profile picture with no context, follow up, or follow through….isn’t very helpful. Sometimes, other people say it better, and that’s okay!

Method 1: How

One question to keep in mind, perhaps the most important, is the How. What aspect of this event are you sharing, especially if it involves deaths or violent acts against other people?

Lots of people go for the shock factor, sharing the deceased bodies of bloated corpses drifting ashore or storm dirtied faces huddled together for warmth. It’s usually the hook mainstream media goes for.

But I’m asking you to enable the platinum rule. How do you think THEY would want to be shown to the world? Share the message without relying on poverty porn. If you can find a non-graphic image to share, choose that one instead. The family and friends of a young woman murdered by a jealous follower would not appreciate seeing images of her corpse in every hashtag. Have like, the slightest consideration, yeah?

Also, be careful to watch your tone. It is much more admirable and effective, in my opinion, to uplift news stories than try to tear “mainstream” narratives down. A great example of this is backlash from “progressive social justice activists” on Greta Thunberg’s popularity after her speech at the Climate Action Summit 2019. These particular social justice activists mean well, in that they want other young people’s voices to be acknowledged by mainstream media (or rather, their social bubbles). BUUT the part I don’t agree with is bashing Greta while doing so.

So…what SHOULD you do then??

Instead of dragging Greta for whitewashing young social activism in climate change, I much prefer (and encourage) when people uplift voices from black and brown communities and sharing their contributions without discrediting someone else. One of the reasons I suggest this is because *looks at above steps* JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVENT HEARD ABOUT IT DOESNT MEAN THE COVERAGE ISNT THERE.

While Greta is very prevalent in recent stories, young First Nations activist Autumn Peltier is widely known in Canada for her fight for the fundamental right for clean water. She has spoken to many global audiences, including the UN General Assembly, years before Greta’s Thunberg’s speech in September 2019. Autumn is an icon.

There were also dozens of articles about the other young activists of color alongside Greta at that very Summit. THEY ARE KNOWN TOO. Diversify your media. Greta’s publicity is significantly heightened because of her white privilege, yes, that much is obvious. But she is also an ally who acknowledges Autumn and other young activists of color. ALSO she is a child. I’m not saying support erasure, but you KNOW the difference. So in my opinion, upliftttt > break down.

So what can you do in the future?

Well, as I said before – DIVERSIFY YOUR MEDIA OUTLETS. I assure you, these events and situations ARE being covered. People DO care. To argue otherwise is just spreading misinformation. 

If you don’t already spend time reading the news at least once a week, I’d highly recommend it! Even if it’s just on the toilet after six rounds of Spicy Wing Sauce Sunday. Here are some of my favorite news outlets.

News outlets 

• BBC (you can filter by region)
• Vox
• Reuters
• CBS News 
• Aljazeerzaenglish
• The Guardian
• Bloomberg News
• SBS News
• VICE News
• Free Radicals
• NY Times / LA Times (I’m a tad biased and prefer the LA Times, which focuses more on California, Mexico, and Central/Southern America, while the NY Times is a tad more even across the globe)

On that note, also follow your more local news outlets. Like, how you gonna care about the whole world but not even know what’s happening in your own community?? I don’t have any specific recommendations for news sources local to YOU, but just look out for ones that are unbiased (or as little bias as possible) and substantial (aka offers more than just a headline).

So no, BuzzFeed isn’t your best bet.

Also, take a look at their writing staff. If you only see men – that’s a red flag. If you only see white writers and editors – that’s a red flag too.

As far as platforms, Flipboard is probably my favorite and you can save articles for later too! Many publications offer daily/weekly newsletters too!

Diversify your media – on SOCIAL MEDIA!

Social media gets a bad rap for sharing news, but it has its use. Likeeee, getting a very general oversight of topics and events, yup, social media is very good for that! But there is also a lot of fake news (or misinterpreted/twisted news) on the interwebs, which is unfortunate.

Instagram Accounts to Follow to Diversify You Media

So here are my recommendations for reputable accounts to follow that offer thoughtful, thorough, and transparent coverage while simultaneously being approachable and helpful! They aren’t all specifically social justice or activist accounts, but they are all accounts that encourage you to think critically, question the narratives of events and topics, and also encourage you to spark conversations and dialogue on these subjects.

Imogen from Hazaar the Bazaar

Imogen is a traditional journalist turned travel writer and blogger, bringing alternative media to those of us who aspire to be better global citizens. I particularly love reading these posts because Imogen has the unique talent of really driving home sustainable and ethical practices without preaching from a pedestal. Imogen recognizes her privilege, and from that, peels back the lens of inequality in travel and beyond.

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Kashia Dunner, Career Coach

Kashia is a career coach, professional development strategizer, business consultor, and basically all-around leadership icon. Although her business is not directly tied to travel or news reporting, if there is one person on the internet that can help you think more critically, it’s Kashia. She shares easy-to-digest insights on various topics like consumerism, personal finance, workplace inequality, to even what interviewers ACTUALLY judge resumes for. Plus, there is plenty of sprinkling of how communication works and all the behind-the-scenes of what makes things tick.

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Buppie from Buppie Dit Bonsoir

Featured in my Black Travelers to Follow post, Buppie is a travel writer with the mind of a lyrical genius. With the levelest of heads, Buppie is able to eloquently describe the most complicated internal struggles with the utmost humility and understanding. It’s a GIFT. The writing in itself is thought-provoking, invoking comment conversations that make me feel like I just stepped out of a Soul Cycle class – in the best way. The community is inviting and supportive, and I always learn something new. Buppie is such a strong advocate for representation, diversity, and inclusion, and I am HEREEE FOR IT!!

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Elizabeth from Temporary Provisions

If writing were a drop of water, Elizabeth would overflow the ocean. Her gift with words is a force to be reckoned with on its own, but as a freelance writer (specializing in finance), there is no higher bar ever set. Aside from always being truthful and transparent about her job, Elizabeth is also very vocal in addressing injustices and hypocrisies she witnesses or experiences. These range from disappointingly scarce offerings of fashionable (and sustainable) plus-sized options in brands to the lack of diversity in French cabaret shows. And Elizabeth does it with such precise wit that it makes the process of social awareness…really fun and humble. I dig it.

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Iliah from Negra Bohemian

I have featured Iliah before in my post about Traveling with Children, and I just want to extend another nod in her direction for being not only an educator for her kids, but also for your audience as well. Iliah acknowledges her surroundings when she travels, both the political and social climate, and offers great resources to learn more about topics from different countries and really breaks down the complexities in a way that is simple to follow along and eventually find more information! I also appreciate that she regularly updates her audience about world events and gives a well-researched analysis instead of just screenshotting the headline. Iliah teaches her children to be better global citizens, and she leds by example.

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Kay from The Awkward Traveller

And then there’s lil ol’ me. Hi, I’m Kay.

I’m not gonna front – I don’t know everything. I don’t even know most things. BUT, I am here to use my platform to help make travel more relatable, inclusive, and accessible to everyone. Especially those of us that are under-represented. I strive to include voices from locals to dispel rumors about the countries I visit, as well as sharing what I learn as I also grow and evolve. I do my best the shoutout others doing the work to educate and inform, so if you ever have any questions, concerns, or comments, please feel free to always reach out!

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