The British press features too many negative and irrelevant news stories that don’t accurately reflect what’s going on in the world, former BBC broadcaster Martyn Lewis said on Wednesday night
Speaking to an audience of more than 100 people at the Good News for the Media event held at the British Museum, Lewis said most media outlets do not tell people stories about things that are truly shaping our world.
“I had a routine look at the BBC website recently, and out of 10 stories, seven of them were negative. There was ‘girl, 5, dies; teen body found, stabbing…’” he said.
“What about all the positive change that’s happening? I see so many great stories that just aren’t getting picked up. Where are the reporters looking at how the riots last year have brought communities together?
“Twenty years ago The Times editor Simon Jenkins told me he switched off my bulletins after four stories. I asked him why; he said: ‘because the body count was too high.’ My children wouldn’t watch either.
“A balanced news agenda should hold an accurate mirror to the world. News stories should be about things that have the potential to shape the world. We don’t need to hear and see graphic details of a bus crash in Humberside. That is relevant to locals, but it does not belong on the national news.”
Recounting an incident from his days at the BBC, the broadcaster said: “Martin Bell, my colleague at the time, covered 14 wars. He chartered the disintegration of those cities. When he asked the BBC if he could cover the rebuilding of them, they just said no, and sent him on to the next war.
“But, people should know about changes that offer hope. There are some amazing solutions happening to the problems in our world and the mainstream media isn’t covering them. Journalists analyse everyone else, but they are defensive when someone analyses them.”
He said he believed persistently negative reports have given people a skewed and depressing view of the world.
“News stories should be about things that have the potential to shape the world”
The event was organised by the website What a Good Week, which rounds up positive news stories from around the globe. Its founder, Jodie Jackson, set the site up a year ago because she wanted to be informed about what was going on in the world, but couldn’t face all the bad news she was coming across.
“I hear of so many people switching off from the news altogether because it’s just so negative,” said Jackson. “I almost became one of them myself but decided instead to search for the positive things that are going on in the world, to get more of a balance.”
Following Jackson and Lewis’s speeches, the editor of Positive News, Seán Dagan Wood, and founder of Ideal Media, Jeremy Wickremer, also took to the floor.
Wood said there was a clear and growing hunger for positive news with a spate of websites and good news initiatives launched in recent years.
“As well as dedicated good news sources such as Positive News, some mainstream media organisations are now branching into positive content – such as the LA Times, which has set up a Twitter feed for its positive stories following reader demand. In places from Afghanistan to Pakistan and Italy to Israel there are media outlets trying to get more positive stories out.
“Positive News has also initiatied sister papers in Argentina, the US, Spain and Hong Kong. There is a huge amount of support out there for changing the news agenda. Yet, a test we did in July showed that the average British newspaper’s content is only around 16% positive.”
Jeremy Wickremer, who is organising a two-day event in London next week called Transformational Media Summit, said that the mainstream news was showing humans at their lowest ebb, and that we need to see people at their best too.
“You don’t just go and moan to your friends the whole time and neither do you just go on about the good things. There needs to be a balance.”
The Transformational Media event will run on 27-28 September and features an extensive list of speakers who will talk about ways to use media for social change.
Wood, Wickremer and French NGO Reporters De’Espoirs are now looking at setting up a global alliance of media organisations and journalists that are taking a solution-focused approach to news reporting.
