Probably about once a week or so during the nearly three decades that I led newsrooms, somebody would call me to gripe that the media was too focused on bad news. So it’s the media’s fault, the reasoning would go, that people are angry about the way things are going in America.
Usually I would summon what I considered a patient response, saying something like this: Several dozen flights take off and land each day at our local airport, and we never publish stories about that marvelous phenomenon, but if just one those planes were to belly-flop, well, our team would swarm the story. That’s not because journalists hate airlines or love crises; it’s because news is made when what happens deviates from what’s usual — and, thankfully, life usually hums along pretty well for most of us. Exceptions to that are newsworthy.
And then I would add this, if I felt brave: There’s also the fact that people pay attention to bad news – they consider it more important – and that’s because of what psychologists call negativity bias. That’s the scientifically documented human tendency to give extra attention to negative information.
This negativity bias was an evolutionary advantage for the earliest homo sapiens: Our ancestors in caves needed to focus more on an impending attack by a tiger at dusk than on the beauty of the sunset’s glow on the tiger’s stripes. While these days we’re mostly not hunted by wild beasts, it’s still true that we display a preference for what’s bad – or, as it was phrased in a scholarly paper in the Psychological Bulletin a while back, a “propensity to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information.”
That explanation might have gotten a clever newspaper editor off the hook on the negativity claim. Yet there remains this awkward reality, too: It’s attention that drives audience growth for media, and since our attention is naturally drawn more toward the bad news, as we’ve discussed, there’s a market bias across all media toward the negative, too.
By the way: It’s also what gets politicians attention and votes. Case in point: Donald Trump’s wildly dark vision of life in America – streets awash in crime, children being persuaded by teachers to undergo sex change operations, and similar lies – and then his assertion that he alone can save the country from a group of people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people” – and, in reference to Democrats and journalists alike, the “enemy from within.” That bad news got attention. It also won 1.5 percent more voter support than what Kamala Harris’s less negative view got her.
And, finally, there’s this: Negativity in the news is also driven by superficiality. Distracted news consumers give scant attention to most of what’s published, so they miss the veins of golden good buried in the mountains of bad. Awful wars yield death and chaos – but also produce heroic freedom fighters and relentless peace activists; political turmoil cripples good government, but it also exposes honest brokers who won’t cave in to extremism. In virtually every story that makes us shake our heads, a bit of mental jujitsu can unearth a cause for celebration.
But let’s be real about what’s going on right now: Many of us can’t quite stand all the bad news flowing from the impending return to power of Donald Trump. Our negativity bias is on overlad, and we need a break. So as we end one year and start another, it’s a good time to remember that we can find the good news that’s out there. And maybe by focusing on those smaller stories – which reveal, say, our growth and progress, or our humanity – we might be relieved of some of our relentless disappointment.
We may have to search for the stories. But they’re out there if we look and listen. Let me give you just three examples:
Libraries. They’re remaking themselves across America, and drawing a lot of citizen support in both tiny rural towns and big cities. Some are offering free health and wellness classes, others have opened food pantries, or they’re offering fitness and cooking classes, conversations about mental health, even blood pressure monitors that can be checked out like books. Let’s support our local libraries, for the good they do.
Or check this second bit of good news: solar power on farms. A new study from England shows that agrivoltaics – where land for farming is also used to produce solar power – leads to better crop yields, and uses less water to generate power than in open fields. It turns out that crops like corns, beans and Swiss chard grow better in the partial shade provided by the solar panels.
And this is a big good news story you may have missed: CDC data released this month shows a drop of almost 17% in drug overdose deaths from 2023. It’s apparently partly because of over-the-counter availability of naloxone, as well as increased access to addiction treatment medications and harm-reduction services. The fight against opioid use disorder is beginning to show progress.
Look, there’s a lot of bad news all around us. It’s just the reality of what results from our political system, our information ecosystem, our market economy. But as we look to a new year ahead, one resolution that might serve a lot of us well would be this: Let’s find those bits of good news that are really all around us – and then pass them on. Like this.
Happy New Year, 2025.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.