Mickey’s guest for the hour is media scholar Nolan Higdon. They discuss how the principles of critical media literacy could help the public make sense of the current, chaotic election season in the U.S. and how the divide and contrasting worldviews between the older and younger generations can be partly explained by their choices of media. They discuss the consequences of our serious lack of media literacy education and how the American electorate could benefit from learning media literacy skills and by diversifying their media diets to include more independent outlets and fewer corporate, establishment ones, too busy cheering and jeering Team Red or Team Blue to report factually on the key policy issues that really matter to voters most.
Note: This program was recorded on July 12, prior to the shooting attack against former president Donald Trump.
Dr. Nolan Higdon is a lecturer in Education at the University of California Santa Cruz campus and a prolific author on media issues. He is the author of The Anatomy of Fake News and co-author of The United States of Distraction, The Media and Me, and Let’s Agree to Disagree. He writes on Substack at NolanHigdon and also has an article, which we discuss, in the June/July issue of The Progressive magazine titled “The Establishment Strikes Back.”