When I'm working on The Happy Broadcast, I try to pick news that has an international appeal and touches themes like animal rights, climate change and science. News that shows how much we’re progressing on many fronts despite being often bombarded with few-mongering headlines.
I think there are many reasons why negative news is dominating the media. It's like a sudden disaster a, it's more compelling than, for example, little improvements. Bad things can happen quickly, but good things aren’t built in a day, and as they unfold, they're out of sync with the news cycle.
As humans, we have this thing called “negative bias” that make us respond quicker to bad or dangerous situations. Nowadays, this bias is getting in the way of our happiness and well-being, and even our productivity because most of the narrative surrounding us (print, online or mobile) is that the “world is ending".
I think we should find a balance between negative and positive news. From politics to climate change and economy, negative and bad news surrounds us everywhere we go. A potential solution could be to limit the amount of bad news, basically slow down our personal news cycle, adding some positive news to our “news diet” to make sure that our outlook on the world is more optimistic. Also, it's very important to invest time to deal with misinformation and the reliability of news sources.
