OPINION:News is "good" or "bad" depending on context: so wealth tax is bad for wealthy, good for rest
JUST WHAT is meant by “positive news stories”? For Eamon Dunphy it is “happy- clappy stuff”. For his former boss, the chief executive of Newstalk, Frank Cronin, positive news would counteract the feeling of “desolation and despair” caused by the media’s focus on the negative. Journalists at Newstalk, he was quoted as saying, were to focus on the positive.
For journalists to be told to concentrate on the positive or the good news is anathema. News is news. It is that thing defined by the aphorism “man bites dog”, another way of saying that the news is the unusual, the new and possibly the bizarre.
It is about one plane crashing not the thousands that took off and landed safely.
Academics have long tried to define what makes news and what journalists mean by their “nose for news”. The most famous academic study was by two Norwegian sociologists, Galtung and Ruge, who in 1965 published a study that listed 12 factors defining newsworthiness.
These include unexpectedness, reference to elite persons or elite nations, timing and, of course, negativity. Galtung and Ruge are still studied in journalism schools today, although later studies have added to their list. Celebrity, for example, is now included.
Most would probably accept that what constitutes news is a mix of newsroom culture, subjectivity and probably bias.
There are other elements: what is in other media, things that make people say “wow!” and, of course, things that will affect people, negatively or positively.
So, if news is not to make us feel good, what is it? Possibly something of importance to the audience, which has been gathered, one hopes, honestly.
It might not always add up to much, it might even be wrong, but it is published because a journalist believes it to be of interest and possibly of some importance. Whether it depresses you or makes you smile is beside the point.
Trying to define “good news”, or positive news, is difficult. It all depends on context. A wealth tax may be good news for those not wealthy enough to be caught by it, but not for the wealthy. The election of Michael D Higgins as president was good news, but hardly to the other six candidates.
Journalists don’t try to serve up a diet of doom and gloom. TV news is famous for the “and finally” story that the producers hope make you smile. This newspaper regularly has a bottom-of-page-one story to lighten up the front page.
Journalists accept that stories must be consumed and that their worst offence is to make the important boring. Defending sensationalism in the Daily Mirror, the legendary editor Hugh Cudlipp said: "We believe in the sensational presentation of news and views, especially important news and views, as a necessary and valuable public service in these days of mass readership and democratic responsibility."
As Cudlipp clearly understood, our purpose is to give people the information and the arguments necessary to make important decisions and to function in a democracy. Sometimes it is done well, at others very badly, but it is better done badly than not at all.
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1835 that “in order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils it creates”.
Rather than offer up something that is tailored to be positive or “uplifting”, the media might better serve its consumers by limiting the influence of the public relations industry, responsible for vast amounts of the news we absorb every day. If there is one industry that likes good news – good news for their clients – it is the PR industry.
Michael Foley lectures in journalism at the school of media at the Dublin Institute of Technology