Like a lot of people, I find the news these days dispiriting. But it’s not just the events being reported that I find depressing, it’s the way they’re being reported: scored with a relentless drumbeat of negativity that makes me feel as if I’m being marched to the edge of an abyss, only to be left there alone to contemplate our increasingly bleak future.
They may not think of themselves this way, but journalists are storytellers, and the way they tell their stories shapes how you and I see each other and our world. The problem, however, is that journalists usually tell us only half the story – leaving us with a very distorted view of reality.
In this interview with David Bornstein, co-founder and CEO of the Solutions Journalism Network, we learn how journalists around the world are being trained in a new approach to the stories they write, one that doesn’t shy away from the problems, but that also, with equal journalistic rigor, reports on how those problems are being solved.
It’s an approach to journalism that not only helps create a more complete, and more hopeful, understanding of our world, it also has the crucial side effects of helping good ideas spread around the planet, while simultaneously helping to restore the people’s trust in the Fourth Estate.
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Kern Beare is the founder of the Difficult Conversations Project and the author of Difficult Conversations: The Art and Science of Working Together. He also facilitates a workshop based on his book, which is free for non-profit organizations and community groups.