September 15, 2016 | Julia Becerra.  The News That Do Not Usually Make The News. Do good  stories sell ?

On a recent trip to a Latin-American country I was pleasantly surprised when during a cab ride I heard a news program on a radio station. I strained my ear to pay even more attention and make sure what I was hearing was right.  The news program had a segment named “Happy news”.  The correspondents reported live from all around the world.  The news were prefaced with either “ I am happy to report ….  Or “I am celebrating “.  The enthusiasm on the reporter’s voices was contagious to say the least.

The experience stayed with me.  Even when the car was moving through busy streets and some not too spirit lifting scenes, I had still on me the good sensation of the good news shared by the radio station.  I asked myself, are we ready in America to hear more good news within the many TV news programs that seem to captivate our attentions every day?

I searched online for any good news segments.  I found out that Yahoo had a section for unusual or funny news but not necessarily one for ‘good’ news.  I ran the same search for TV’s news channels.  None of them had any specific segment of their online page dedicated to it.

On a world run by economics and the forces of supply and demand, it is clear that good news do not sell.  The demand for good news probably barely meets the supply.  Americans in particular are drawn to focus on bad news.  Bad news is the subject of water cooler conversations. Bad news are shared even with strangers; people you barely know, acquaintances, or train or elevator riders feel comfortable and motivated to talk about a bad news event.   Would they feel inclined to share a good news event?  No.  It would look and sound awkward.

Even when we are sharing a good event we feel the need to bring out the negative.  I remember a project I worked on a while ago.  It was a successful implementation. Myself and my team were so proud of it.  When talking about it with my immediate manager, he quickly went to highlight an issue we had had during the project which did not impact the milestones at all. The rest of the meeting was about that and the good feeling about our success was clouded with his remarks.   And this happens everywhere, even in sports!  In the recent US Open Tennis tournament , after Stan Wawrinka had won the championship, the commentator said “Well, he did win this match, but he did not do it in 3 sets; it took him 4 sets to be able to do it”, which it was indeed a fact.  He spent a good amount of minutes going over and over all the things that did not go well for Stan Wawrinka during the match.  It was a valid comment. But was it necessary to linger over it?  Are we subconsciously requesting a bit of bad news even when the news are good?

Why is this? Do we love more bad news than good news? Many people often say that they would prefer good news. But is that actually true? To explore this possibility, researchers Marc Trussler and Stuart Soroka, set up an experiment  run at McGill University in Canada. The experiment results (https://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2013/Trussler-Soroka.pdf) suggest that, regardless of their preferences as stated in a survey, participants were more likely to select negative content.

The experiment participants often chose stories with a negative tone – corruption, set-backs, hypocrisy and so on – rather than neutral or positive stories. People who were more interested in current affairs and politics were particularly likely to choose the bad news. And yet when asked, these people said they preferred good news.

Is there any good news in all this? According to positive psychologists we can change our habits, and we can focus on the glass being half-full. When we acquire new habits, our brains acquire “mirror neurons” and develop a positive perspective that can spread to other people like a virus. This is about being able to reprogram our brains. To apply this  positive psychology research knowledge to our attitudes and behaviors with relation to our current economic conditions, we can encourage our news deliverers to present a more balanced  point of view and bring up to the headlines at least one good story every day. This may take time, but it can still be done.

One  online newspaper already took a step forward by creating a section dedicated to publishing good news: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/section/good-news

To get myself started on that process  I did find a website dedicated just to share good news http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/.

I hope you get to browse it often and to feel compelled to share the news next time you are by the office water cooler or just when chatting with a neighbor.

For me the good news today is that I got to share with you my radio listening story.  Change your habits. Share your good news story. … Leave a comment.

 

Thanks for reading my blog.  You can follow me on twitter @jbradiant