On Our Lives with the News

A reflection on how mainstream news media has become so negative and unhelpful, and a suggestion for what to do now. Bornstein’s main recommendation, as a way to “make goodness as riveting as evil” is to engage people with curiosity. Because “we’re wired to pay attention to threats, but we’re also wired to love puzzles.” So he suggests that we tell positive “How dunnit?” stories that present some positive event – a success in government or institutions, in the way that business is typically covered in the media, rather than just the failures – framed in a way that encourages people to be curious about how the success was achieved. For example: “how did this school actually increase the high school graduation rate when all the other schools with similar resources haven’t been able to figure that one out?” They also explore a ‘Hippocratic Oath for Journalism’, which seeks to make media “radically helpful”.