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True news stories are being replaced by hype and hoaxes

Last Thursday, October 15, 2009, I received an unexpected phone call from Radio Mitre, one of the main radio networks in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Argentinean producer explained they wanted to interview me to have more information about “an important event” happening in Colorado (the state where I live.)

I immediately thought the call was about newly released statistics showing that in Colorado there are at least 12,300 homeless children, ages 6 to 18. These children attend classes every day at public schools, but they don’t have where to sleep at night. And almost half of these children are Latino.

I thought that situation should be interesting enough to receive a phone call from a reporter on the other end of this continent.

Alternatively, I thought they were calling me because they wanted to talk about the fact Colorado is the first state in the country to lower the hourly minimum wage, due to deflation. Again, a reduction in salaries, and being Colorado the first state to approve such a measure, should have been “newsy” enough to merit a call from Argentina.

There was another, more remote possibility. Perhaps Radio Mitre wanted to talk about that for the first time a Mexican-born professor, Dr. Manuel Laguna, will lead the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Dr. Laguna is an internationally recognized expert on interface of computer science, artificial intelligence, and operations research. I thought Laguna’s experience, expertise, and his position as interim dean of the Leeds School were perhaps the reason for the long-distance call.

My list included yet another possibility. Perhaps the Argentinean reporters wanted more information about the upcoming race, to be held in Denver on October 31, 2009, when more than 1,000 people will run 5,6K wearing gorilla suits.

The event, organized by the Gorilla Conservation Fund, want to raise money to save those animals and, at the same time, wants to break the world record of people running in gorilla suits.

With so many things happening in Colorado, some good, some bad, some odd, some worrisome, I was certain of the items in my list was the reason for the call from Argentina. I was wrong. They only wanted to talk about an over-inflated birthday balloon, supposedly with a child inside, even when experts and images from the beginning said that was not possible.

At the end, I did several reports for Radio Mitre and even for Channel 13 in Buenos Aires, first to tell what people thought was going on and then to report what was really going on with the “balloon boy.”

I don’t mind doing reports. Quite the opposite. But I would like to talk about other issues, such as the growth of wind energy in Colorado thanks to technology and investments from Spain, or the advances in space exploration done locally, or even the fact that in the San Luis Valley (southern Colorado) people still speak every day the Spanish spoken in Spain in the 17th century.

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