The Columbia Journalism Review

By Mathew Ingram
APRIL 21, 2020

Since we are currently in a global pandemic that has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the closure of stores, restaurants, and other hallmarks of normal life, it’s not surprising many people are searching for things to take their minds off the gloom. And what they are clinging to—and sharing on social networks—is often explicitly “good news,” be it heartwarming stories about kids having virtual birthday parties where friends drive by and honk their horns, or people banging pots and pans to celebrate healthcare workers. There’s even a “news network” dedicated to this kind of thing, although it’s a tongue-in-cheek take on the genre. It’s a YouTube channel that features actor and filmmaker John Krasinski, best known for his role in the sitcom The Office, sitting at a desk in what appears to be his den, dressed in a suit and hosting a show he calls Some Good News, complete with a hand-painted sign that reads sgn (drawn by his children). He throws to video clips and does live interviews, just like John Oliver or Stephen Colbert, but the purpose is to be uplifting, not satirical.

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It seems churlish to even question this trend, because it’s so clearly designed to be heartwarming. Who doesn’t want their heart warmed, especially when we are all marinating in a stew of fear and despair? And even if someone didn’t want their heart warmed, what kind of monster would begrudge someone else having theirs warmed? Especially if it’s by a little girl being serenaded by the entire cast of Hamilton because she couldn’t make it to the real Broadway show. Watching that kind of gesture—as calculated or orchestrated as it might be—touches a very human place in us, just like watching kittens play with string, or seeing a child do something adorably dumb. When I shared a short video clip of a spring stream flowing through the woods near my house recently, several people I don’t even know thanked me profusely for it, as though I had offered them a drink after days of crawling through the desert.

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The problem is that the whole point of the news is to inform people about the world, to give them the knowledge of events that might affect them. And a lot of that knowledge involves depressing things like viruses, or quarantines, war, and death. Is it nice to have a respite from that? Of course. Even journalists need to take breaks, as CNN reporter Brian Stelter admitted he had to do recently, after getting overwhelmed by the relentlessness of coronavirus coverage. But a focus on only good news could easily turn into escapism, if it involves deliberately avoiding the truth in favor of something that feels better, because it implies that the world is just fine the way it is, and therefore nothing needs to change. That’s a little too close to the “bread and circuses” the ancient Romans provided as a way to keep the populace in line.

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