We need more good news stories, like Yamato Tanooka’s rescue | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
The negativity in our 24-hour media-obsessed culture can get on top of you. It would be great to have a better balance with tales about the brighter side of lifeThe joyous news that seven-year-old Yamato Tanooka has been found alive and very much unabducted, unmurdered, and uneaten by wild bears, will have brought smiles to many a face this morning. The child, who disappeared after he was made to get out of his parents' car on a mountain road for misbehaving, has been found bunking down in a military hut after spending six nights out alone. "I'm overcome with emotion," said his father in a public statement, "Really, thank you very much."
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.
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