Good News Doesn’t Sell

Nearly twenty years ago I went to see a dynamic international group of young performers called “Up With People” sing at the Strand Capitol Performing Arts Center. There were songs in the program I liked so I bought a tape that ran for weeks on a tape player on auto reverse. The song that still rings in my mind at times contains the line, “We sure could use a little more good news today.” To some degree that song reflects the time it was written but look at two of the lines that seem to be for today:

“Some senator was squawkin’ “bout the bad economy
It”s gonna get worse you see, we need a change in policy”

That senator’s name today is Obama. And one thing I have seen over the years, “it”s gonna get worse’ is often a self-fulfilling prophecy that is used by politicians to get elected! Several of the worst we have had in my lifetime have been elected on that platform. Bill Clinton managed to get elected that way and his legacy includes a national embarrassment, 9/11, devaluation of our currency and a rise of terrorism.

Sure there is a lot of bad news. Bad things happen in this world as the result of evil men and women. Robbery, murder, corruption, earthquakes, tornadoes, accidents, rape, child abuse are just a few of the evils. Politicians like Obama and Clinton encourage them by taking a posture of weakness. But there is another aspect of this that we often miss. There is good news but good news doesn’t sell. I kid wining the special Olympics gets hidden behind a kid that hurts an old lady in an robbery attempt. Unfortunately that is not only in the papers, the radio, the TV, the news. It is also in the halls of government, and unfortunately in science, in entertainment. In government only problems are worth money for programs. Only funded programs provide money that can be siphoned off to make people rich. No bad news, no money.

No money, no opportunity to misuse it. In science only threats that can be trumped up are worth money for grants. If there are no grants academics actually have to work for a living teaching. If you don’t claim an asteroid is going to hit the earth you don’t get money. If you can’t claim an earthquake will hit New York, no money. In entertainment look at the fare. Sure there are movies like “27 Dresses”, “What Women Want”, that have good endings. But they are called, with disdain, “Chick Flicks” while movies like “Asteroid”, “Comet’, “Earthquake in New York” and the Michael Moore bad news fictional trash get top billing and money. Check the advertising on films. Watch the previews in the theatre some time. The bad news films get more AD time!