Finding good news amid the bad at year-end

Blame the media or our own negativity bias, but sometimes it just takes a different view to find what's going right

Sometimes seeing good news depends on how you look at things. (Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash)

Probably about once a week or so during my nearly three decades leading newsrooms, somebody would gripe to me 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. So news begins when something is out of the ordinary.

But, I would add — if my media-only-cares-about-bad-news accuser wasn’t yet bored by my explanation — there’s also the fact that people consider bad news to be more important, because of what psychologists call negativity bias. That’s the scientifically documented human tendency to give extra attention to negative information. It was an evolutionary advantage for 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, as research in the Psychological Bulletin put it a while back, a “propensity to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information.” ¹

That explanation might have gotten a clever newspaper editor off the hook on the negativity claim. Yet there remains this awkward reality: It’s attention that drives audience growth for media. And since our attention is naturally drawn more toward the bad news (see above), there’s a market bias across all media toward the negative, too. That applies to newspapers, television networks and Substack newsletters. Interestingly, more recent international research led by Stuart Soroka, a University of Michigan professor who is an authority on political communication, has found that negativity bias seems a bit less pronounced than experts have long believed. “Especially in a diversified media environment, news producers should not underestimate the audience for positive news content,” Soroka and his colleagues wrote in a scholarly journal in 2019.²

And 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 both heroic freedom fighters and relentless peace activists; political turmoil 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.

So as we end one year and start another, it’s a good time to step aside from the usual diet of bad news — the wars, the economic disparities, the partisan division and government dysfunction, and, of course, the real threat to the democracy we cherish that is presented by a mentally imbalanced former president. Those are all real, and they deserve our relentless attention and committed action. But we shouldn’t overlook some of the developments of 2023 that may give us some comfort. I’ve made a list that deserves consideration for a current Top 10.

1.)  The world is waking up to the climate crisis. Nearing the end of the hottest year on record — and probably the hottest of the past 150,000 years, scientists surmise — the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 28) was moderately successful in its effort to help the planet avoid the worst effects of global warming. It didn’t demand a scheduled “phase-out” of the planet-killing fossil fuels, as many advocates had hoped, but it did urge a “transitioning away” from the technologies that are causing catastrophic global warming, and the 200 nations pledged to triple new investments in renewable energy. That’s a big deal, because, in the words of Inger Andersen, the head of UN climate programs, “the world is no longer denying our harmful addiction to fossil fuels.” Plus, after years of negotiation, an historic “High Seas Treaty” was signed in the fall aimed at protecting one-third of the world’s seas from human pressure by 2030, in order to slow climate change and protect biodiversity in the oceans. We’re not doing enough to avert disaster, but we’re making progress toward that goal.³

2.)  America’s economy is showing its resilience. By the year’s end, inflation was down to near the Federal Reserve’s target, employment remained high and fears of a recession were, well, receding. In the year’s third quarter, the economy grew at a brisk 5.2 percent pace. Consumer spending remains strong, and private investment has surged — including investment in housing, despite high interest rates. While it's not what you’ll hear from Republican politicians or from the Republican propaganda arm, Fox News, this economic good news is clearly a result of carefully calibrated federal monetary and fiscal policies.⁴

3.)  Some liars are being held to account. Speaking of Fox News, the “newsfotainment” giant agreed to pay more than $787 million to settle a lawsuit based on its knowingly false reporting that a voting machine company, Dominion Voting Systems, helped steal the election from Donald Trump. Fox still faces a similar lawsuit from another election technology company, showing that even in a society that rightly guards free speech, intentional disregard of truth can be expensive. That lesson in the enforcement of the Ninth Commandment was also presented to Rudy Giuliani, who declared bankruptcy to avoid having to pay a $148 million jury award to two Georgia election workers he defamed with false claims of election fraud. And George Santos, surely the most brazen liar in politics — quite a distinction, that! — got thrown out of Congress, finally, and faces a necessary reckoning in a criminal courtroom. There’s still a lot of cynical balderdash being peddled by partisans, but both courts and the court of public opinion are beginning to call it out.

4.)  Justice is gaining on Donald Trump. For all his continued success with what are often called “low-information voters,” the former president is finding the legal system less susceptible to his fact-challenged bullying. Trump now faces 91 criminal counts in four separate prosecutions, as well as a second defamation case brought by a writer whom a jury concluded that he raped in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. And a collection of civil lawsuits are pending against him and the Trump Organization, notably including New York Attorney General Tish James’ fraud suit, which could shut down the ex-president’s business in the state. Oh, and this: Two states so far have knocked Trump off their presidential primary ballots, ruling that his efforts to overturn the 2020 election violated the Constitution’s prohibition against anybody serving in federal office who has participated in an insurrection against the United States. We’ll see how the Trump-friendly U.S. Supreme Court rules on that, but there’s at least an outside chance that those avowedly constructionist justices could decide that the 14^th amendment means what it says, and that it thus will block another White House term for a man who tried to upend the will of voters four years ago.⁵

5.)  We’re better protected against Covid-19. The coronavirus that caused the global pandemic starting in 2020 is still with us, but hospitalizations and deaths have slowed dramatically. What has changed, mostly, is not just the natural immunity that has been built up by the disease’s spread, but also the protection that’s offered by the continuing development of updated vaccines. The availability of those shots — for many people, the fifth booster is this season’s protector — is a remarkable example of the capacity of scientists to face down threats in our environment. Countless individuals were involved in the war against Covid, and the fact that we are not still closeted in our homes is a tribute to their work. ⁶

6.)  Workers are gaining power in the marketplace. With unemployment at 50-year lows, workers have more power to challenge the dominance that employers have enjoyed for generations. That’s partly why unions have scored extraordinary victories in some labor conflicts. The United Auto Workers used six weeks of rolling walkouts at factories to win unprecedented deals with the Big Three U.S. automakers, and both writers and actors in Hollywood got contracts that promised wage gains and job protection. Public approval of unions has risen to levels last seen in the 1960s, according to Gallup. Will that reverse the dramatic shift of wealth from the middle class to the upper-income Americans that begin in the late-1970s? We’ll see if the trend continues in 2024, but it’s worth celebrating a bit of resurgence for the middle class that has been shrinking in America since the rise of Reaganomics.⁷

7.)  Crime is falling.  Despite partisan claims that the nation is awash in crime, the murder rate dropped in 2023 by one of the fastest rates ever. Other forms of violent crime area also down, according to preliminary data, including rape, aggravated assault and robbery. Vehicle theft is up, though, and the Gun Violence Archive reports that there have been more mass shootings this year than last year. Do you think that might prompt Congress to someday act to limit the spread of firearms? As the political clout of the National Rifle Association wanes, the chance for thoughtful gun control is rising.⁸

8.)  Majorities are demanding their rights. America’s founders were so determined to protect the rights of minorities that our system was built with anti-majoritarian idiosyncrasies — like the electoral college and the equal representation of tiny states and big states in the U.S. Senate, both of which these days give Republicans greater clout in Washington than the party’s share among voters. So some problems don’t get solved even if they’re favored by a majority of Americans — like gun restrictions, abortion rights and environmental protection. But in some states, voters are seizing back power. In 2022, six states had abortion rights initiatives on the ballot, and Ohio followed in 2023 — and the pro-abortion rights stance won in each one. Voters in about a dozen states could find the issue on their ballots in 2024, and there are signs they might seize the initiative from elected officials who cater to the anti-abortion rights minority.

9.)  Strong women are carrying the day. Taylor Swift is a remarkable musical talent, but she is also a role model of authenticity, resilience and adaptability. You could say that about Beyoncé, too. And Barbie, as she is depicted in 2023’s biggest movie. Beyond the entertainment world, we can look to Fani Willis, the brave Fulton County District Attorney who is prosecuting Donald Trump, and the female university presidents who are facing down right-wing attacks on higher education that masquerade as concern about free speech. These women are challenging double standards that have long held back half the human race. The pay disparity between women and men isn’t gone — women are still paid 84 cents for every dollar that men earn — but the growing dominance of female students in higher education and the capability of women in countless workplaces foreshadows that gap closing in the years to come.

10.) Good people still make the world better. Consider: When a 3-year-old was found face-down in an icy backyard pool in Ontario, not breathing and without a pulse, a team of firefighters, cops, medics and doctors refused to give up: They kept performing CPR for three hours without stopping as they warmed him, until the little boy began to breathe on his own. And there’s this: On an I-95 bridge in Virginia, an Army veteran pulled over when he saw a teenager pacing beside the road in the dark, only to watch as the youth leapt into the freezing stream below. The veteran jumped in after him, and rescued him, finally, a mile downstream. There are countless stories of such goodwill each year — and no, they are not ignored by the media; they are, in fact, highlighted, which is how we’ve heard about them. And they renew our hope in each other, don’t you think?

Those are 10 stories recounting what I consider good news that have been reported by American media in 2023. There are so many others that could make the list. Might you offer some ideas from your own reading or experience? (Note: Commenting directly on this site is available only to paying subscribers.)

So as we dig good news from the bad, this is worth remembering: It is only by perseverance that we’re able to succeed in our shared effort to make our communities better — and that work is having an effect, as this list reveals. As depressing as our daily media diet may well be — between the violence that is always a part of human experience and the political turmoil that we seem unable to avoid — there is good reason for us to keep hope alive. In many ways, 2023 has been a fine year, and we have a chance to make 2024 a better year. But not if we lose that hope, and give up.

Thank you for joining me in The Upstate American community over these months, and for sharing wholeheartedly in this determination.

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3652533/

2. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1908369116

3. https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/some-key-takeaways-cop28-climate-summit#:~:text=But%20it%20did%20stipulate%20the,cause%20of%20the%20climate%20crisis.

4. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/economy-doing-better-5-percent-annual-pace/

5. https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-key-cases-civil-criminal-investigations-lawsuits-updates-2022-7

6. https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/whats-new/5-things-you-should-know.html

7. https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2023-11-09/from-hollywood-to-auto-work-organized-labor-is-flexing-its-muscles-where-do-unions-stand-today

8. https://www.axios.com/2023/12/28/us-murder-violent-crime-rates-drop

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If you’d like to learn how to write opinion essays — for newspapers and for audio or digital platforms — check out the live class Rex co-teaches, that is offered by The Memoir Project. Click below for information. Our first class of 2024 is coming up on Wednesday evening, Jan. 17. Eastern. Lots of our students have been well published — and you can be, too.

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IF YOU’RE A READER who wants to hear more of Rex Smith’s views, check www.wamc.org for his weekly on-air commentary aired by Northeast Public Radio. Here’s a link to the latest essay. And if your interest is specific to American media, you can download the podcast of The Media Project, the 30-minute nationally-syndicated discussion that Rex leads each week on current issues in journalism. In the states where Northeast Public Radio is heard, the program airs at 3 p.m. each Friday, and is rebroadcast at 6 p.m. Sunday. You can tune in live, too, at www.wamc.org. It has been called “a half-hour of talk about finding and telling the truth.” It’s often worth your time!

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Thank you for reading The UPSTATE AMERICAN. Since it’s a holiday weekend, we’re again presenting a shortened version of the weekly newsletter — without our usual Newsclips from the Upstates feature. Remember that comments on the Substack platform are limited to paying subscribers, though we are grateful to all our readers for taking the time to join us here. In this season, we are especially grateful to those of you who have been with us since our launch in March of 2021.

We wish each of you a new year of joy and peace.

- Rex Smith