“The universe is not made of atoms; it's made of stories.”
― Muriel Rukeyser
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.
The dystopian vision much of our media creates does not happen by accident. It’s the result of what my latest podcast guest David Bornstein, co-founder and CEO of the non-profit Solutions Journalism Network, calls journalism’s “disastrous (if well-intentioned) theory of change.” Put simply, the theory says that to make the world better, it’s first necessary to show people how terrible it is. It’s a disastrous theory, says Bornstein, because rather than inspiring engagement, it fosters depression, anxiety and fatalism:
If you keep people focused on the violence in the world, on the corruption in the world, on the untrustworthiness of other people, you’ll create a situation where people are more fearful, more protective, more divisive. You'll create the conditions where people do not work across lines of difference. And that's exactly what’s needed to create a dystopia…you need people to be fearful and disconnected.
Rather than creating fear, says Bornstein, journalists need:
really skillful ways of telling stories that draw out the better angels of our nature, that draw out our capacity for connection, that help us be in conversation with people we disagree with profoundly. How do we create stories that create that kind of container? That's the question.
Helping create such a container is the mission of SJN. They work with news organizations around the world to train journalists in how to take a more holistic approach to news reporting – to educate the public not just on the problems of the world, but also, with equal rigor, how people are trying to solve those problems and what can be learned from their experience.
Adding this critical piece to the journalistic framework, says Bornstein, does more than create a more complete, and more hopeful, understanding of the world. It also has the potential to help the press regain the public's trust, particularly at the local level. That’s because to be successful, a solutions approach requires journalists to develop deeper relationships with their communities, forged through a deeper understanding of their interests and problems. Says Bornstein:
When news organizations ask communities what they want, the first thing they say is ‘we want news that helps us solve our problems.’ And when news organizations then ask what those problems are, they get a list of things that are real pain points in people's minds.
And then the news organizations say, ‘okay, you told us that you're really concerned about the mental health of your teens…we're going to do some research on understanding the drivers of this problem. And then we're going to look at whether or not there are places in our community, or perhaps other communities, or maybe even in other countries, that can help us understand how to respond to these problems.’ And then they’ll bring that back to the community and say, ‘let’s talk about this, let's talk about some of these ideas.’
If you want to really rebuild trust among your audiences, in a time of intense partisan polarization, you need to be able to speak to people at that level, you need to be able to show that you care.
It’s very hard to show people that you care if what you do every day is tell them another thing they need to worry about. You may think, as a journalist, that that's your job. But that's not empowering people in any way. Or frankly, respecting them, respecting what their nervous systems can handle.
Journalism that respects people might be the best way to convey what Solutions Journalism is really all about. And it might explain why my conversation with David left me feeling a lot more hopeful about the role journalism can play in healing our democracy.
I invite you to listen to the entire interview. What I’ve shared here only scratches the surface of this empowering approach to journalism.