The Problem with Good News
How Happy News-Stories are used to Confirm Stereotypes and Prejudice
In Danish we call them “Solstråle historier” — “sunshine stories” — news stories, or fictional narratives in film and media, that center on a positive outcome, person or development. A story of success or happy endings — frequently the unexpected kind. It might be the story about how more ethnic minority women in Denmark are succeeding in completing high-level education. It might be stories about more ethnic minority kids completing high school in some neighbourhoods. It could even be a story like this one, about how an elderly couple are completely fine after moving to a neighbourhood with mostly “non-western immigrants and descendents” as neighbours (Yes, that really made the news).
In this blog-post I am going to talk about some of the problems with positively angled news-stories. I recently wrote a blog-post about the battle-fatigue that occurs when you face a lot of negative information, microaggressions and racism. But in that post I only talked about stories that had some sort of racist angle or agenda (intentional or not). However, a lot of my work centers on the subliminal, unintentional and counter-productive forms of racialization and discrimination that occur in film and media that have specifically inclusionary or anti-discriminatory agendas. So I figured I would do a blog-post on that. (Because it is a blog-post it will not be a complete or thorough analysis — just some considerations.)
What do these positively angled news-stories do? What makes these stories newsworthy? Do they succeed in countering stereotypes, or do they confirm them through exceptionalism?
First: What makes News Newsworthy
When I took classes in news-media and journalism during my years studying for my MA and BA in film- and media studies in Denmark, I was introduced repeatedly to the 5 news criteria (de fem nyhedskriterier). These criteria reoccur throughout books and texts on journalism in Denmark, for instance here.
In Danish they list as follows: Aktualitet, Væsentlighed, Identifikation, Sensation, Konflikt. In English that translates into: Timing, Significance, Identification, Sensation and Conflict.
In American and English journalism there tend to be a few more criteria added to the lists, but typically most of the above 5 will feature in some shape or form as well. Here are some examples with five, seven and eight criteria — but some lists feature more, like the twenty-one news-values on wikipedia. I wonder if these criteria are taught in journalism programs? (Perhaps this was specifically part of the Copenhagen University media-programme.)
When I was introduced to the criteria — they were described as follows:
Timing in this context has to do with whether or not the story is current — whether it is relevant at the moment. Usually this means, that news is more newsworthy if it relates to other current news/current events.
Significance typically has to do with meaning or effect of the piece of news — will this impact many people? Will it have broad significance?
Identification on the other hand has to do with the individual reader. Can they recognize themselves in the story? Identification doesn’t just mean identifying with the story 1:1, it can also mean wishing to be more like the person(s) in the story or resenting/fearing the outcome the story had on others, because one identifies with that risk.
Sensation — these are the dramatic stories that either “fascinate or shock”. You might come to think of the critiques of journalism for being sensationalist — which might mean that a story was made to look more sensational to draw in readers, or was chosen mainly for its sensational angle, without much else to make it newsworthy. Think of clickbait, for instance.
Conflict; typically people or cases of conflict. Somehow news stories seem more newsworthy when there is an opponent or two opposing sides. This is not unlike the age-old storytelling models which center around heroes and villains, evil and good — but it can also feature two sides that are neither, as the conflict is typically what makes the story relevant in itself.
Good news isn’t necessarily good journalism
Aside from the above 5 news criteria I was frequently reminded of “the angle”: The entry-point to your story, the main hook that is supposed to draw your reader in. Typically the angle is clear already from the start of an article, since good journalism tends to put its most important information up front in the text.
So, much of what we learned to consider good journalism, was finding an interesting angle that sets your story apart.
However, the downside of peddling to these criteria and to finding the sharpest angle, is that you might overlook the premise that qualifies your story to live up to them.
For example, a sunshine-story about someone succeeding, like the one about more ethnic minority students completing high-school or more female ethnic-minority women completing university degrees, would have to imply any of the following premises to live up to the criteria:
For this to be timely, it would imply that until recently this was not the case. However, the increases in numbers of educated minority-youth look to be slowly and steadily increasing (as such, the same type of “news” can be found repeatedly in Danish newspapers over the last many years).
For it to be significant, it would imply that this impacts a huge number of people and their everyday lives, which is hardly the case. As such, the premise here relies on an idea that lack of education was a big problem to begin with.
I am not entirely sure who the stories are intended to create identification for, if that was the criterion at play. Do the stories appeal to minority-danes (and if so, is the premise of identification trying to teach them something about how to behave/what to do?) or do they appeal to majority-danes (and in that case, who/ what are they identifying with?)?
For these stories to be sensational, the underlying premise would be that there is something fascinating or severely interesting about minorities being educated. Perhaps this is a stretch, but that might have seemed sensational to the same audiences 500 years ago, or so.
Which brings us to conflict — and while these stories seem conflict-free, they may well have been chosen for this criterion nonetheless, as they offer a perspective in a highly conflicting and conflicted area of Danish politics: immigration and integration. The stories might aim to show that conflict is un-necessary or non-existant, but for these stories to make the news, they are already acknowledging that there was something to be conflicting over in the first place.
So in this case, the stories about successful minority-youth, or a non-violent minority neighbourhood might at first glance seem like good news — but perhaps they aren’t good journalism? And maybe, just maybe, it would make more of a statement if we could agree that “minority-success” is not necessarily news, but norm.
Many rights still make a wrong
When I encounter other critiques of sunshine-stories, the premise is usually that there aren’t enough of them. The logic: If we had many nuanced stories of succesful minorities, the majority would understand that they are fine, and minorities would feel recognized/seen.
This type of argument often highlights that the problem with positive news-stories is tokenism. In this case, tokenism would mean that the few positive stories become excuses for the continual production of negative stories, since the coverage is considered fair or balanced. It would also mean using the examples of “good minorities” to legitimize critiquing those not considered good enough.
However, I would argue, that even if we had many more sunshine-stories; many rights still make a wrong. Increasing the amount of sunshine stories will not necessarily change the pattern they produce; majorities can use these stories to exercise power through definition of what constitutes being good (or at least good enough to make the news). Even if news-stories feature a multitude of examples of good behavior — the premise would still be
- that this behaviour is novel/significant/sensational/against odds and therefore newsworthy, or
- that majority media can define (and celebrate) what they deem good behavior through making it newsworthy.
We need to ask ourselves — what do media outlets have to believe about minorities for them to render these stories of their success newsworthy? For positive stories to make the news, does the media rely on it to be unexpected or “new”? Or are they, by making it news — making it new — thereby reproducing a narrative that this success is different than the norm? If you see a newsstory about someone doing something positive, will you assume that it made the news because normally that someone doesn’t?
Worlds Best News
Take for instance the Danish newssite Verdens Bedste Nyheder (Worlds Best News). An independent news-channel wishing to “produce constructive journalism and campaigns”. They “communicate progress and solutions to the Worlds challenges”. It sounds great, right?
Taking a quick scroll through the news-stories on their front page these are some of the stories I came across.
At first glance it seems a relief to only read positively angled news-stories. It might even seem that the positive angle automatically nuances the premise, since we are used to hearing a lot of negative news.
However, assuming that these stories are nuanced, just because they aren’t framed in ways we are used to might be doing a disservice to our critical reading. If we allow ourselves to think beyond the positive intentions of these stories we might notice, for instance, that:
- The type of gender equality being highlighted seems to take its point of departure in gender as a binary male/female topic, and as something that only impacts (cis-gendered) women.
- Three of the four stories on “equality/equity” (Ligestilling in Danish) are either directly or indirectly about women from non-european/non-western countries (even the story about global gender equality stresses that “also in developing countries, there is progress on issues of equality”). The premise in these stories; that the places where gender-equality deserved most attention (even from Danish Media) are “developing countries”. This might serve to further a neo-colonial industrial savior complex, where white/western majoritized media police and evaluate gender-efforts in essentializing ways through Human Rights Discourse. This becomes even more clear in the fourth article, which is an uncritical/unnuanced walkthrough of Human Rights from a “Western” perspective. Ratna Kapur has done excellent work on this — for more reading see my recommendation in the bibliography.
- One story argues that progressive companies can move the agenda against landgrabbing, human rights and more — in activist ways (“Analysis: corporations are the new activists”). With a background in CSR-consulting, I have seen first-hand how companies can leverage their power in remarkable ways to push agendas on environment, human rights and anti-corruption. However, as much research has shown, this premise can be harmful if presented in unnuanced ways, because it might overlook the greenwashing or pinkwashing that occurs under corporate efforts and because corporations might be appropriating and taking credit from key activists’ work.
Final takeaway
With an overwhelming majority of news about minorities or non-Western countries being negatively framed or critical, it can feel like a relief to finally get some good news. As such, a positive news-story might initially feel alluring. But positive stories about minorities are like peeing your pants: at first it might get all warm and you might even feel relief, but look at the bigger picture and everything is about to get cold, sticky and stinky — and it doesn’t matter why you did it — the consequences are real for you and for everyone around you.
Literature
Kapur, Ratna. “‘Un-Veiling Equality: Disciplining the ’Other’ Woman Through Human Rights Discourse” in Islamic and International Law: Searching for Common Ground. (2012).
Puar, Jasbir. “Rethinking homonationalism.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45.2 (2013): 336–339.
