Frequently I read complaints that the Biased Liberal Mainstream Media focus on bad news while ignoring positive developments throughout the world, and truth be told, there is some merit to those grievances. I follow the news closely, and very little of what I see, hear and read lately could be classified as “good.”
But that’s a problem that’s easy to solve. Just think how much better you’d feel if you read stories like these instead of the usual negative stuff:
“Constance Fundament, president of Christian Mothers Against Presidential Blasphemy, Scatology and Profanity, yesterday praised President George W. Bush for going a whole week without accidentally uttering a common four-letter word for fecal matter into a live microphone that he thought was off.
Or we could try this from our own state:
“Fall colors will be more vibrant and distinctive in the mountains this September, according to Bob Booster, head of the Centennial State Marketing Commission.
“‘In many previous years,” he said, ‘the aspen dominated the views, and so people often missed the subtle autumn glories of the stream-side willows, riparian cottonwoods and hill-side scrub oaks. But now the flamboyant xanthous aspen are getting out of the way of the more expansive views that we’re eagerly anticipating, and we’re sure that visitors will be amazed by what they see this fall.’
“He also pointed out that aspen appear to be thriving on at least a million acres in Colorado, ‘so people who go in for that sort of thing will still have that opportunity.”‘
Elsewhere on the home front, we’re not getting this good news:
“Testifying before a congressional oversight committee last week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said there were upwards of 2 billion telephone calls, e-mails and credit-card transactions that American security agencies did not examine in 2005.
“‘For obvious reasons, I cannot provide an exact number,” Gonzales said, ‘but we have a pretty good estimate. There are occasions when we respect the rights and privacy of American citizens.”‘
And why dwell on the dismal when it comes to education?
“A nationwide survey earlier this year found that a majority of 2006 high-school graduates could read and write at a sixth-grade level. And nationwide tests disclosed that many other graduates could understand street signs, make change and send and receive short electronic text messages.”
In foreign news, we could accentuate the positive:
“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday pointed out that there are at least four Middle Eastern nations not current warring with other Middle Eastern nations.
“Citing Qatar and Dubai, ‘as well as other countries that I will not mention for security reasons,’ she said their current pacific status ‘should demonstrate to the world that peace dominates in the region.’
“When a reporter asked about how many Americans would be evacuated from the region on account of an alleged conflict between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, she took issue with the word ‘evacuate,’ and said the State Department had found ‘a good deal for passage on a Mediterranean cruise ship, and we wanted to share this bargain with American citizens who happened to be in that area. This is a great time of year to visit Cyprus.”‘
Tired of bad news from Iraq? Then look at the bright side:
“At a press briefing in Baghdad yesterday, Maj. Gen. Wallace Pangloss announced that 144,871 American military personnel in Iraq had remained healthy on the preceding day. “They were not killed or injured by insurgent forces in direct conflict. Nor were they harmed in any way by improvised roadside explosives or suicide bombers, he added. Further, there were also 26,074,548 Iraqis who made it through the day without injury, and ‘I think that pretty well negates anything you might have heard about a mosque being bombed with heavy civilian casualties.”‘
When you think about how pleasant the news could be if it were just presented properly, you have to wonder why there’s so much bad news. It’s just a matter of emphasis, after all.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
