[introduction]

STORIES, NEWS, AND THE CHALLENGE OF OPTIMISM

Media distort reality and breed pessimism. We need
optimism for more health, happiness, and success.
We need freedom from the press to get there.

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE STORY

We create our reality through our stories.

Every change begins with a story.

Societies rise and fall by the stories they tell.

Our lives are made by the stories we hear and the ones we tell ourselves.

That’s why media—as our professional storytellers—play such an important role.

That’s why it matters that media focus almost exclusively on whatever goes wrong.

Media feed pessimism and depression.

Media stand in the way of solutions that could help improve lives and our world at large.

And that’s why a book on optimism has to start with a story about the news.

MORE BOMBS, MORE MONEY

I spent the first ten years of my career as a reporter at the leading newspaper in my country, the Netherlands. I worked in the newsroom in Rotterdam before becoming a correspondent in Delhi, India, and ultimately leading the economics desk. In chasing news, I came to a deep understanding of something we all know: Media are much more interested in what goes wrong than in what goes right. If it bleeds, it leads. In India, on a freelance contract, more bombs meant more monthly revenue for me.

I used to think the negative, pessimistic focus of the media was grounded in the choices of the writers and editors. I thought that if the writers changed the way they saw the world, we would have more balanced newspapers and broadcasts.

As much as I still support that perspective, I now know things are much more complicated. It’s not just that many of my former colleagues were pessimists, always suspicious, and preferred dressing in black.

The press is under siege.

It all comes from a big misunderstanding. Somehow, somewhere, in the decades since World War II, we have started confusing telling stories—informing the public—with selling watches, cars, soda, and toothbrushes.

Nowadays, publishers are supposed to target certain well-defined interest groups. In fact, each new media initiative starts by defining its audience. As much sense as that seems to make in today’s money-driven world, it’s unethical. Media’s contribution should come from their stories, their content—not their capacity to serve a certain audience and to attract money from advertisers. There is, I’m afraid, more policy behind the ads or commercials than behind the stories. With small exceptions here and there, there’s no free press anymore. But standing in the way of this crucial constitutional right is not a dictator—it’s the market economy. It’s capitalism.

“History has shown that competition and free markets deliver real value … something we should encourage,” Rupert Murdoch said when he acquired the Wall Street Journal in 2007. This may be true in many industries. Better cars drive on India’s roads today than they did twenty-five years ago, when the Indian economy was basically closed. But the same model has not led to better journalism. It won’t lead to better symphony orchestras either. We have to save certain parts of our society from the thinking of the Rupert Murdochs.

THE EROSION OF DEMOCRACY

Watergate is a heroic example of the importance of the free press. But do you remember how long it took for media to start questioning America’s invasion of Iraq? Numbed by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it took some two years before important critical questions about weapons of mass destruction and more were raised in the media. The American people were deceived—much like at the time of Watergate— because the media were not leading the quest for the truth.

And do you remember that Disney refused to distribute Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 because, as Disney executives said, “It’s not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle.”

Would that be language Katherine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post in the Watergate era, would ever have used?

The problem is that Disney is in the wrong position to begin with. Disney is an entertainment company. Such a company has nothing to do with serving the freedom of the press. But Disney has become one of a handful of big corporations that own most of the media in the United States. These corporations increasingly sell “infotainment”—a word that reveals why Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton frequent the pages and websites of serious media.

In the meantime, the fourth pillar of democracy is staggering.

I’VE MADE BOOKCASES, BUT I’M NOT A CARPENTER

The press doesn’t matter anymore, some will argue. We have Twitter. News spreads instantly through social media. These days, we are all journalists.

The evolution of social media certainly brings a lot of good. Whereas the average front page is 90 percent frauds, floods, fires, murders, and diseases, research shows that what people share on social media is more positive than negative. The more positive an article, the more likely it’s going to be shared, explains Jonah Berger, social psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, in his book Why Things Catch On. And in an interview with the New York Times he said, “The ‘If it bleeds’ rule works for mass media that just want you to tune in. They want your eyeballs and don’t care how you’re feeling. But when you share a story with your friends and peers, you care a lot more how they react. You don’t want them to think of you as a Debbie Downer.”¹

So friends care about each other, and tweeting and sharing tend to be more positive. But tweeting is no journalism. Journalists are trained for years to write good news stories that cover all relevant angles. Good journalism is a trade. It should present and explain the news. It should investigate and discover. Media should always be on a quest for the truth. Social media should complement that, not replace it.

Let me put it like this: I’ve made bookcases for our home. Recently, we hired a carpenter to do the same. I could easily see the difference between his work and mine. I’m definitely not a carpenter.

OBJECTIVITY AND TOOTHBRUSHES

Leading media pride themselves on objectivity and fairness. They follow a strict policy of fair reporting that includes the facts and perspectives of all the interested parties. But I’d like to put this objectivity to the test. If you ask the people you meet today how their day is going, most people will say that in their lives more is going right than wrong. Yes, all of us suffer from pain and loss from time to time. But it’s fair to say that in most lives most of the time more goes right than wrong. Ultimately, our world is quite a happy place (more about that later).

Now imagine a visitor from outer space who just reads the papers and watches television news to get an idea about this newfound world. Without meeting with real people, that visitor will think this is a place of despair and failure. Media are not objective. Far from it. Media distort and misrepresent our reality.

While I was reporting in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, I saw with my own eyes that journalists were “adjusting” stories to meet the expectations of their newsrooms. If the mujahideen resistance fighters were quiet that day, they were made to be dangerous. They had to be to make sure newsstand sales didn’t plummet. It was never official policy, but the pressure to “perform” was always in the air. Evelyn Waugh wrote a satirical novel about this: Scoop. I only wish reality was not so close to his satire.

Media use a tool dictators have used with great success for centuries. They spread fear and pessimism because it sells. Editorial choices are determined by business interests and by stock prices. Newspapers have become like toothbrushes. Stories have become commercials.

GREAT INNOVATION … ONE PROBLEM

I remember when the paper came in the morning. In the evening, we watched the news. In between: no news. That changed during the first Gulf War in 1991, when CNN jumped on the scene with twenty-four-hour broadcasting. Great innovation … one problem: There was not enough news—or so it seemed, because the same stories kept being repeated again and again, hour after hour.

In the past, the onslaught of negativity was restricted to twice a day. Now it has become a twenty-four-hour bombardment that continues in elevators, at gas stations, and in bars where people meet to relax.

It matters which stories we tell each other. If media continually shout that the world is falling apart, we will register that and it will influence our perspectives. It’s much harder to see a beautiful world when you get reports only about problems and disasters.

Between 1990—one year before the twenty-four-hour news invention—and 2010, the world population grew 40 percent—mostly in developing countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of people suffering from depression rose 300 percent—mostly in rich countries—making it one of the biggest challenges to health and well-being. I’m not a social scientist, but I see a remarkable correlation between the rise of depression and pessimism and the twenty-four-hour negative news invasion over the same twenty-year period.

HOW DO YOU FEED YOUR MIND?

In recent decades, many of us have discovered that what we eat makes a big difference to our health. We have changed our diets. We take better care of our bodies.

But most people still don’t pay much attention to how they feed their minds. And the impact of what we put in our eyes and ears is as deep as what we put in our mouths. “News is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest,” wrote Rolf Dobelli in the Guardian.²

To be healthy, we need to avoid sugar. It’s the same with the news. Like bad eating habits, continuous exposure to bad news makes you sick.

What makes it worse is that the news is often irrelevant to you. Black Swan author Nassim Taleb gives a good example. When a big bridge collapses, the “news” interest will be on the person in the last truck that made it over. That may be sensational but it’s not relevant to you. What is relevant is the story about the fragility of the bridge. Was it a structural problem? Could that happen in a similar bridge you go over one day?

News is often about things you cannot influence. What can you do about the next bomb blast in Afghanistan? Or even about the next tortured and twisted soul who opens fire on an innocent school crowd? Nothing. But these sad stories do make you feel powerless and helpless. That’s how the news feeds pessimism and depression.

It’s a fair guess that you read some twenty-four news stories every day, or at least their headlines. That comes to some 10,000 news stories per year. Do you remember a story you read in the past year that has helped you make a better decision about your life? Most news is not helpful to you. It interrupts your thinking. It stands in the way of creativity and the emergence of new ideas. As Rolf Dobelli wrote in the Guardian, “If you want to come up with old solutions, read news. If you are looking for new solutions, don’t.”³

So often what is presented as news is really olds. It is not about innovation, breakthroughs, solutions, or new insights. In short, it’s not optimistic. It’s about sad repetitions of unfortunate events that don’t support and enrich your life. That’s very pessimistic.

FREEDOM FROM THE PRESS

We are always calling on developing countries to allow for freedom of the press. But the Western world faces something as important: We need freedom from the press. Freedom from a press that focuses on negative news to the exclusion of the good. Freedom from a press run by advertisers rather than by journalists. Freedom from a press in which the bottom line is more important than the common good. And—most important—freedom from a press that feeds depression and pessimism and stands in the way of progress.

TWO FREE WEEKS AND MORE HAPPINESS

If you are like most people, you spend an hour a day watching or reading the news.

Research has shown that after watching the news for fifteen minutes, most people need fifteen minutes of relaxation exercises to get rid of the resulting anxiety and mood disturbances. (Don’t think you aren’t one of them. The research shows that the news affects everyone.)⁴

I don’t know anyone who does that. But more important, why would you consume the anxiety-provoking news in the first place? That’s a very poor investment of your time.

Imagine what you could do with your time if you stopped reading and watching the news. One hour a day equals fifteen full days a year that you could invest in activities that give meaning to your life.

“Another press is possible.” That slogan was on our T-shirts when we launched the English-language edition of our magazine at the World Social Forum in Porte Alegre, Brazil, in early 2003. It is a T-shirt I often wear. We want to live in a different world. A healthier, greener, happier, and more just world. For that world to become reality, we need more optimism and different stories. The press should find these stories. But, ultimately, these stories begin with you and me. When you embrace optimism and take the time to discover your story, your life will become richer and happier and the world will be a better place.