Spreading The Good News
One of the most frequent lamentations about the news is that most of it is negative. There isn't enough reporting on good news from Iraq. Like a disease, the airwaves become regularly infected with a juicy celebrity murder story … or a frightening story about the threat of disease and infection.
Yet, it looks as though news outlets are looking to find some good news these days.
NBC "Nightly News" recently began a series (that may become a permanent part of the broadcast) called "Making A Difference" which "highlights positive stories, such as an optometrist who delivers glasses to Third World countries, or actress Maria Friedman battling breast cancer while continuing to star on Broadway" as USA Today's Peter Johnson described it. He added that "media outlets have traditionally aired or published such fare periodically, usually after gripes from viewers or readers that the news is all negative."
Indeed, in a recent Daily Nightly entry, John Reiss, the executive producer of the broadcast said as much -- that the newscast gets a "large chunk" of e-mail from viewers "who simply ask, 'Why don't you air more good news?'"
As Johnson noted, it certainly isn't the first time that news programs have given news with a positive spin a chance. Back in 1996, CBS News' own Wyatt Andrews was quoted in Johnson's column about a then-new series on the "Evening News" that he was covering, called "The Best of Us." It featured positive stories about people across the country -- a husband and wife who made a fortune selling ribs from a storefront and donated it to students who couldn't afford to go to college; an artist who taught quadriplegics how to paint.
Andrews told Johnson at the time:
Hartman agrees. "The problem with reporting good news is that [viewers] say that we need more of it, but when it comes time to vote with their remote controls, they don't watch it. … People have been complaining about this for as long as I can remember. No newsroom I've worked in ever got a phone call suggesting that we report more bad news. It's a common complaint, but news directors realize that it doesn't reflect in the ratings."
Andrews was told that "The Best of Us" series was eventually cancelled because at the time, the "Evening News" was being promoted as "the hardest news broadcast in network news" and the series "fought that sales pitch." Andrews added that it may have been discontinued "because they weren't getting feedback from the audience, but they never told me that."
To those critics who suggest that positive stories are more of an attempt to soften the hard news broadcasts, Andrews says that such stories are necessary for viewers to get an accurate picture of the world around them. "I think we should be doing this far more frequently simply because these people are part of the American scene -- simply from a journalistic point of view, because they represent a piece of the American reality."
Hartman offered a similar perspective, saying that the amount of negative stories on television news offers a "skewed vision of what this country is all about. It's easy to report about crime and scandal and murder and fires … finding a story in something more ordinary is usually a lot harder." He emphasized that the way a story is executed is perhaps the most valuable part of the story itself. "A positive news story that's well told is just as interesting" as something more salacious.
At the same time, reporting positive news shouldn't be the primary objective in journalism, says Andrews. "I don't think the network broadcasts should abandon their primary mission to question authority, to question power," he said. "Journalism's primary mission is to question those in authority based on the theory that a watchdog media contributes to better decision making. If you hold people up to questioning, the quality of government gets better eventually, that's the theory."
"There's a flip side to this," Andrews said. "In some proportion, we should also hold up people who do well, so that they can be copied and emulated. And what the proportion is – 90%-10%; 80%-20% -- I don't know … but some proportion should be finding good."
In producing "The Best of Us," "we purposely set out to look for people whose small-scale actions took on big-scale problems," said Andrews, who added that in light of the pending transition of the CBS "Evening News," he hoped the broadcast would "find a place" for such stories.
But, as always, what is newsworthy is in the eye of the beholder. "To me, 'newsworthy' is something that people can relate to," said Hartman, "something that they can learn from, something that feels relevant. … A lot of what passes for news on television is irrelevant in people's lives."
"The decisions [of what is newsworthy] are arbitrary anyway," he said. "A random person is missing and for some reason we make that a news story … If a lot of decisions are arbitrary why not make them arbitrarily positive?"
© 2005 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved. Yet, it looks as though news outlets are looking to find some good news these days.
NBC "Nightly News" recently began a series (that may become a permanent part of the broadcast) called "Making A Difference" which "highlights positive stories, such as an optometrist who delivers glasses to Third World countries, or actress Maria Friedman battling breast cancer while continuing to star on Broadway" as USA Today's Peter Johnson described it. He added that "media outlets have traditionally aired or published such fare periodically, usually after gripes from viewers or readers that the news is all negative."
Indeed, in a recent Daily Nightly entry, John Reiss, the executive producer of the broadcast said as much -- that the newscast gets a "large chunk" of e-mail from viewers "who simply ask, 'Why don't you air more good news?'"
"'Making a Difference' didn't happen by accident," wrote Reiss. "It happened because we saw a need, and we saw that need because we heard you. Senior Producer Sharon Hoffman pitched some story ideas about individuals who were changing people's lives for the better. The more the staff talked about the stories, the more we realized we had something special: legitimate good news stories, stories that were not about planes landing safely, but were about people who were, yes, making a difference."NBC isn't the only outlet spreading the good news. This week, CBS "Sunday Morning" did a piece on positive stories around the country that get overlooked by the mainstream press. Correspondent Steve Hartman looked through local newspapers for stories and found three -- a school lunch program that had been revamped to include only all natural food, and it turned out that the students really took a liking to tilapia; local cops who began issuing bike lights instead of citations to bikers who didn't have them; and a young girl who launched a mini-public relations campaign to raise money for a $5,000 hip replacement for a dog in a local shelter. "Journalists are just like everyone else," said "Sunday Morning" Executive Producer Rand Morrison, who conceived the idea. "We get tired of the 'bad news' too. But it's our job to report on the world the way it is ... not the way we wish it would be, which is why we thought it would be nice to have a break. And what better weekend to take a break than the weekend of Thanksgiving?"
As Johnson noted, it certainly isn't the first time that news programs have given news with a positive spin a chance. Back in 1996, CBS News' own Wyatt Andrews was quoted in Johnson's column about a then-new series on the "Evening News" that he was covering, called "The Best of Us." It featured positive stories about people across the country -- a husband and wife who made a fortune selling ribs from a storefront and donated it to students who couldn't afford to go to college; an artist who taught quadriplegics how to paint.
Andrews told Johnson at the time:
"I can't tell you how many times people have asked me, 'Why don't you do more positive news?' And research shows that people want positive news. But then when it hits the airwaves, they don't watch it. So it's a gamble."When I spoke with him, Andrews again noted this perspective in newsrooms: "There have been many attempts at things like 'The Best of Us' on the 'Evening News'" Andrews said. "Generally – I don't mean everyone, but generally – executive producers come away from it saying that all these efforts didn't get enough of an audience bounce. … They believe that the audience tells researchers and focus groups that they want positive news, but when the positive news goes on, they won't watch it. That's the reputation."
Hartman agrees. "The problem with reporting good news is that [viewers] say that we need more of it, but when it comes time to vote with their remote controls, they don't watch it. … People have been complaining about this for as long as I can remember. No newsroom I've worked in ever got a phone call suggesting that we report more bad news. It's a common complaint, but news directors realize that it doesn't reflect in the ratings."
Andrews was told that "The Best of Us" series was eventually cancelled because at the time, the "Evening News" was being promoted as "the hardest news broadcast in network news" and the series "fought that sales pitch." Andrews added that it may have been discontinued "because they weren't getting feedback from the audience, but they never told me that."
To those critics who suggest that positive stories are more of an attempt to soften the hard news broadcasts, Andrews says that such stories are necessary for viewers to get an accurate picture of the world around them. "I think we should be doing this far more frequently simply because these people are part of the American scene -- simply from a journalistic point of view, because they represent a piece of the American reality."
Hartman offered a similar perspective, saying that the amount of negative stories on television news offers a "skewed vision of what this country is all about. It's easy to report about crime and scandal and murder and fires … finding a story in something more ordinary is usually a lot harder." He emphasized that the way a story is executed is perhaps the most valuable part of the story itself. "A positive news story that's well told is just as interesting" as something more salacious.
At the same time, reporting positive news shouldn't be the primary objective in journalism, says Andrews. "I don't think the network broadcasts should abandon their primary mission to question authority, to question power," he said. "Journalism's primary mission is to question those in authority based on the theory that a watchdog media contributes to better decision making. If you hold people up to questioning, the quality of government gets better eventually, that's the theory."
"There's a flip side to this," Andrews said. "In some proportion, we should also hold up people who do well, so that they can be copied and emulated. And what the proportion is – 90%-10%; 80%-20% -- I don't know … but some proportion should be finding good."
In producing "The Best of Us," "we purposely set out to look for people whose small-scale actions took on big-scale problems," said Andrews, who added that in light of the pending transition of the CBS "Evening News," he hoped the broadcast would "find a place" for such stories.
But, as always, what is newsworthy is in the eye of the beholder. "To me, 'newsworthy' is something that people can relate to," said Hartman, "something that they can learn from, something that feels relevant. … A lot of what passes for news on television is irrelevant in people's lives."
"The decisions [of what is newsworthy] are arbitrary anyway," he said. "A random person is missing and for some reason we make that a news story … If a lot of decisions are arbitrary why not make them arbitrarily positive?"
