Welcome to the first edition of Good News, a weekly newsletter dedicated to covering the notable and optimistic things happening around us.
Now I know what you're thinking: “Good news? In today's environment? Has the author had a head injury recently?”
So let's first state this. My brain is currently unharmed, but a lot of bad things are happening. There is a continuing conflict in Ukraine, where wars have continued for over 1,100 days, but Gaza's tenuous ceasefire could be close to collapse. Global democracy appears to have become more obvious than ever in the last 20 years. Thousands of foreign aid projects have effectively ended, with devastating consequences for the world's poorest people.
The US has experienced the first measles death in years as the outbreak spreads through many Texas amid a decline in vaccinations. They claim that unemployment has risen and consumer spending has declined as economic concerns continue to grow. Ah, despite the dismantling of clean energy policies, climate change is getting worse, but deforestation in Colombia's important South American country rose by 35% in 2024.
And that's just a sample of headlines for the past few days.
So why launch a newsletter specializing in good news when it comes to news? I think Is it worse than ever? Even in a blizzard of bad things, we can't see it because good news is happening around us. We are stuck in the present and we don't understand how much life has improved over the medium and long term.
Take the heading above. Yes, as shown in Ukraine and other aspects, wars are taking place around us, and conflicts have been getting worse in recent years. However, international conflicts were far more common in the past, and were in a few more deadly digits than they do today. The story of the fights and victims in one place could miss a more hopeful story elsewhere. Did you know that the decades-old rebellion that killed tens of thousands of people in Türkiye is finally coming to an end?
Given recent developments, the health of democracies both domestically and internationally is discouraged, to say the least. But we should remember how novel representative governments remember. Recently in 1950 it was considered to be democracy of all kinds, with less than 6% being considered a true liberal democracy. Far back then, they were virtually non-existent. This creates a very different context for the current trouble.
Americans are very concerned about their financial outlook. But economic foundations like unemployment are far superior to most of recent history. The long-term story is one of the major improvements in the US and elsewhere. (Charles C. Mann has recently been entitled a great essay in comparison to the wealthiest people of the past who took for granted that even the wealthiest people of the past “we live like royalty and don't know that.”)
Medicine in particular doesn't even mention the constant flow of scientific discoveries and innovation that arrive almost every day. A new encyclopedia of protein-coding genes; a mathematical model that helps revive coral reefs. A better way to provide gene editing therapy. The first fetus to receive life-saving medicine in front birth. All of this has happened over the past few days too. Perhaps you hadn't heard of it.
It all raises questions: why Have you heard about it? There are three reasons to consider.
There is a bad news bias in the media
I spent nearly 25 years as a professional journalist. So when I tell you there is truly a noticeable bias in the media, I feel I have some authority. But that's not for Democrats or Republicans, neoliberalism or progressive economics. Whether or not you woke up. That's a bias in bad news.
As my colleague written by Future Perfect Dylan Matthews a few years ago, there is a lot of academic research that concludes that news we read, watch and listen tends to be negatively bent. A 2022 study found that between 2000 and 2019, “percentage of headlines meaning anger, fear, disgust, and sadness” was prominent in the United States.
I can tell you that I'm going to do tracks in my experience by reading “Press” and wearing a journalist hat with a tag sticking out of the band. Something is wrong is essentially something more deserves new than something right. Example: The fact that 3 million people have come and go to US airports, and that they have not died in an accident is not news, but one crash is definitely true far You're more likely to be in the first group than in the second group. (In other words method More likely – Based on data between 2010 and 2024, there was only one or two passenger deaths on a regular scheduled flight per year. That's almost 5.9 trillion miles. )
It's a very good reason why journalists have this bad news bias. One of the most important features of the media is as a watchdog, and when something is wrong, the watchdog bars. We in the media should continue doing this. But it simply diverts us from what is working and the slow-moving narrative of actual progress. (Here's one. Between 2000 and 2022, child mortality rates fell more than half worldwide, leading to millions of children who would otherwise have died.
The problem with news audiences is that everything that watchdog bars means that it ends up vision of a world that is much darker than it actually is. And you all play a role in it…
There is a bad news bias in the audience
It's been a long time since I took a picture of the Econ 101, and I recall a B, but I remember the concepts of supply and demand.
When the media's natural bad news bias is supply, the trend of the audience to consume all that bad news is demand. And boy, do we love it!
In the Dylan story I mentioned in the previous section, he wrote about an attractive 17-country study that tried to measure how people responded to positive and negative news by watching “BBC World News Stories in seven randomly ordered BBC World News Stories, randomly ordered on laptop computers while wearing noise-canceling headphones and sensors.” (It's basically my usual Friday night.)
Researchers found that negative news had a stronger physiological response and, on average, attracted more attention than positive or regular news. One study Nature We found that there is a 1% less chance of clicking on a headline for each positive word in a headline.
Of course, social media has the easy ability to optimize feeds for anger, and is only amplifying that trend. Think about the last story you shared on social media or in a group chat with a friend. Perhaps it was negative. And part of the reason we are attracted to negative news is…
There is a bad news bias in our brains
This is what you need to know about me. Like the other 21 million Americans, I suffer from depression.
Thankfully, I was able to manage the condition with regular talk therapy and medication. But I still notice how depression tendencies colour my outlook. I feel like I have a tendency to pull pessimism, a tendency to negatively, to see the worst of things.
Realistic optimism isn't just about feeling better.
When I share these feelings with my therapist, he is ready to say, “Your heart is not a good friend to you.” What he means is that if my melancholy wants to get the 19th century about it, I will let myself be darker than reality. In other words, I have a bad news bias.
You don't need to suffer from depression for this to happen to you. What is known as “negative bias” is one of the most established findings in psychology. As one paper said, when it comes to the human mind, “bad is stronger than good.” It is the fact of human nature that precedes social media, media, and even civilization itself.
It is a product of evolution. Early people who were unable to reliably identify and respond to threats probably didn't last that long in the Savannah, so this bias made it a useful adaptation, even if it wasn't really looking at the world.
But most of humanity today, and certainly most people who read this work, thankfully, are no longer in the position where we regularly face threats to our lives and our limbs. In most cases, we are as safe as humans as ever, and we are pretty comfortable.
But just because the world is totally safer, worries and negativity don't go away. If we actually see the world, then in that real bad mix and Good, we need to retrain our brains to see things differently. So think of this newsletter as a pair of rosy glasses that will help you see things a little more clearly.
Some people may think that actively focusing on optimism in moments of real crisis like the ones we are experiencing now is only a complacent thing, but I disagree. Just as Max Roser, founder of Great Progress Data Site, is the founder of our world, “The world is terrible. The world is far better. The world can be much better.” Realistic optimism isn't just about feeling better. You must believe that the world is worth saving to build a movement that improves it.
This version of the story originally appeared in Good News Newsletter. Sign up here!
