NEWS DUPED The pandemic may have slowed many of us down, but for con artists, business is booming. One elderly woman in Kelowna, B.C., lost $34,000 in a bitcoin scam, complete with a fake banking portal, two-factor authentication process, and account balance. Meanwhile, in Ottawa, a couple’s rental property was fraudulently posted on Kijiji and rented out using text messages and e-transfers. The unsuspecting “tenant” presumed the lack of in-person interaction was owing to pandemic protocols and was left $4,000 poorer, Dave Zarum reports in Pivot Magazine. CONS IN CANADA Here’s what the scams and shams of 2022 have added up to: Reports of fraud: Victims of fraud: Money lost to fraud: 45,387 28,734 $242- million Source: Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. Data as of June 30, 2022. HT) WHEN NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS G I K (RData from the Reuters Institute show people are increasingly quitting the news because C they find it depressing, disempowering or untrustworthy. Many consumers say O T S the problem is bias, while journalists blame a business model where bad news I / R is clickbait. But Amanda Ripley, a journalist and recovering news junkie, E YZ thinks the real problem is the sheer hopelessness of it all. In The Washington Post, she boils it down to three missing ingredients: C ANAL I hope, agency and dignity. People need hope to get up in the morning, F the feeling that they can take action, and the sense that they matter. FT), TRAFInstead, today’s news is a never-ending slideshow of doom and gloom. The New York Times’s ambitious project, “Postcards from a World H (LEon Fire,” is one example. Featuring an image of the Earth in flames, S LA the apocalyptic piece chronicled how climate change has affected P S N life in 193 countries. Ripley called it a well-intentioned effort, but U K/ not one built for humans. “I don’t know what species it would work C LI for, but it’s not one I’m familiar with,” she writes. C Y X According to David Bornstein of the Solutions Journalism Network, O R reporters believe the best way to avoid catastrophe is to keep people focused Y P on the potential for catastrophe 24/7. But with a polarized public and the HY Bbirth of fake news, a better approach is to outline problems and solutions. RAP As Ripley braces for a future of political turmoil, virus variants and climate G O T cataclysms, she has a plea for her fellow journalists: It’s time to change how we O H P tell stories. It’s time to treat readers like humans.