Good News

Hundreds feared dead, billions lost in crisis, human tragedy unfolds.

Why bad news should sell quite so effectively has always puzzled me.  Why it is that newsprint about death, destruction and most titillating of all impending doom is so desirable?   I’m not immune.  I don’t always by a newspaper but I know I did when Diana died, after the Twin Towers were stuck down and when Lehman Brothers went bust.

Catastrophe, as long as it isn’t happening to us, is intoxicating.  The problem with anything that has an intoxicating effect is that it eventually wears off and we look for bigger hits.  Most everyday human tragedy is not newsworthy. It must be on a scale of some magnitude to take hold of our imaginations and give us that adrenaline fix.  

Seems to me if you going to report a train or a plane crash, overestimate the numbers of injured, pump up the death rate.  You can always revise your figures, but scale is everything when the story breaks.

If violence or suffering is not the prime topic much of the ‘news’ that comes to us is gossip.

An endless line up of eager wannabes fills up the garish and glossy pages of magazines whose sole purpose is to report the minute fluctuations in their unexceptional lives.  Of course they might be beautiful when we are plain; they might be rich when we are poor.  They might have scandals and addictions and if they do this only adds value. The cult of celebrity is a very successful business model.  Certain personality types crave attention. Photographers take their pictures and sell them to editors who like circus ring masters arrange their freak show gallery for the public amusement.

People like escapism. Is there really any harm in it?  After all people don’t really want good news do they?  Good news is dull, good news isn’t sexy. If the high drama of disaster is London Fashion week then good news is the anorak in your wardrobe.  Can good news do us any good at all?

I feel like a small voice in the wilderness, but what I want to say is.  Look for good. It’s everywhere. Notice it and help it grow.  Become a good news reporter.  Tell your friends what happened that touched you today.  If you make yourself open to positive vibes you’ll see how kind and gentle and courageous people are and when you do you realise that life isn’t something that you need to escape from.

I remember the day in February 2009 when the snow came to London.  It’s unusual to get such dramatic weather and its severity was such that for one day none of the buses ran and dozens of people were prevented from travelling in to work or school.  It was brilliant.  Out on the snowy pavement kids were building snow men, neighbours who’d never spoken before were chatting eagerly, pushing cars out of drifts and offering help or support to each other.  It was a day of ‘Dunkirk’ spirit and of human connection.  Sadly once the snow melted, so did the impetus to be unilaterally friendly.

It takes a bit of attitude to buck a trend and read the world from a positive point of view, but if you really want to feel something, don’t reach for a magazine, speak to a stranger, do a random act of kindness, open up and take a risk.  It might not be big news, but it’ll be good news and when the fashionable slant is towards the negative bringing forward some balance should be encouraged as a growth industry.