It is very frustrating when you have a good news story which you just can't place, because 'good news doesn't sell papers'. I think there are some lessons to learn that people do actually want good news, just look at what is shared and liked on social media.
When I was in the press office of the lottery many years ago, I often used to take calls from national press journalists asking if we had any good news after some dark story had been played out from every angle, to help lighten the mood for readers.
News should always be about balance, and as long as we in PR keep pushing the good news out there, whether to journalists or to audiences directly, it will make someone's day.
Tanooka’s story serves as a reminder of how, despite living in a 24-hour news-obsessed culture, we rarely get to see things turn out well Instead, news outlets emphasise the horrific, the lurid and the depraved in an attempt to maximise audiences and therefore profits. The result is a skewed view of the world as dark, depressing place in which positive things rarely happen. To look at any tabloid news website, for example, is to be faced with reports of rape, murder, poverty, famine, violence, terrorism and war. Anything positive and heartwarming inevitably goes uncovered or gets lost in the sea of negativity, and the rise of the internet and, more specifically social media, as a purveyor of news is only making the distortion worse.
