Thousands of children living in poverty in southern Africa will receive baby dolls, thanks to a donation by Hasbro of 20,000 black Baby Alive dolls at the special request of US Ambassador. Hasbro has been supporting the work of World Vision in Zambia with a three-year commitment to help support 40 schools, train teachers and purchase trucks to help move supplies quicker through the region.
Shipping Lanes Near Boston Shifted to Protect Whales
"For the first time in US history busy shipping lanes have been changed to protect wildlife. This weekend, lanes near Boston Harbor were shifted to lower the risk of rare right whales being killed by ships." (AP)
Is The Media Really Biased?
A lot has been written about an apparent media bias — a Liberal bias because so many reporters donate to “Liberal causes”, a Conservative bias in radio because so many talk show hosts rule the airwaves with outrage. I believe the single strongest bias dominating American journalism, regardless of political inclination, is the allegiance paid and importance given to the notion that bad news sells.
Never mind the citizen and what is most important for their learning or understanding. Bad news sells, and that’s what matters most. The fevered race for corporate profits has biased the decision-makers within newsrooms toward the sensational and the negative, and readers or viewers are turning away in droves.
Even reporters are rebelling. Witness on YouTube, the on-air protest by an MSNBC news anchor who tried to burn her script after being given the Paris Hilton story as her news lead. (GNN story with video)
The constant drumbeat focused on what’s gone wrong in the world, with nary a mention of what’s gone right, is best illustrated by the Center for Media and Public Affairs study calculating that while the number of actual murders throughout the 1990’s plummeted 42%, American network news coverage of homicides jumped 700 percent during those same years. To any viewer of TV news, the country was growing ever more violent.
If it’s bad news, it’s headline news; if it’s good news, like the murder rate declining, it’s lost on page 23. This is the bias with which we should be concerned: the obvious play toward the sensational and the habitual publicizing of the worst examples of humanity.
A 2005 study by Bayer concluded that an overwhelming 93 percent of Americans wanted more good news in their media diet. 77 percent believed there was not enough good news offered by mainstream media.
No wonder people are turning to the internet for their news. A Pew research study found that while television still ranks first as a source of news among broadband users, the internet is catching up fast. Further, tens of thousands of people each year search on Google for “good news”, and most are rather surprised at what they find.
The #1 offering on Googles’s list for “good news” is a website that features all positive news stories, called the Good News Network. Started by a Virginia mom and former news professional, the website is now in its tenth year and serving over a quarter-million pages of good news each month. The site’s launch in 1997 filled a need that mainstream journalists are just now beginning to recognize.
In the face of a newspaper industry’s overall declining readership, the Grand Rapids City paper carries on their website a daily syndicated feed of headlines from the Good News Network. Next to the tab marked “Odd News” is now a tab heading for “Good News”.
Even some in the mainstream media are starting to realize that good news CAN sell:
- McClatchy Newspapers, the third largest newspaper group last year added a “good news” beat to their Washington, DC bureau and assigned a reporter to cover such stories full time. Now, occasional stories by Frank Greve are filed under a Good News banner on their website, and are distributed on the McClatchy-Tribune newswire, with headlines such as, “Violence against intimate partners down sharply”, “Fewer Americans injured, killed on the job”, and “Many patients who check into hospices to die, don’t”.
- NBC’s Nightly News experimented and discovered – lo’ and behold – good news is popular with their audience. Five nights in a row they featured stories of people who were “Making a Difference” in the lives of others. The series was so successful (the executive producer said they never had received so much mail) that they decided to continue periodically producing such stories and archive them on a special web page.
- NBC’s sister website and cable counterpart, MSNBC, now sports a regular internet column called “Wonderful World” that highlights several stories each week featuring heroes, rescues, or the odd happenstance of luck.
- KXTV-10 in Sacramento airs a weekly Friday feature called, Good News Good People, that spotlights people doing positive works within their community But these are the exceptions.
What will you and I hear and see most over the next days? Will it be a consistent choir of Liberal causes – or an ear-splitting cacophony of Conservative wrath? Maybe. What we are sure to hear and see will be celebrities out of control, fires and storms, bombings and cruelty. Thomas Jefferson said that the mission of the journalist should be to tell the truth about what is happening in the world. If the media only gives us one side, the negative, then we are not hearing the truth about society.
As the late Norman Cousins said, “If news is not really news unless it is bad news, it may be difficult to claim we are an informed nation.”
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Geri Weis-Corbley is founder and managing editor of the Good News Network. She lives near Manassas with her husband and three teens. Sign up to receive her e-mail of the Top Ten Good News of the Week at www.GoodNewsNetwork.org.
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Warcraft Online Gaming Community Rallies Around Boy With Cancer Who Makes-a-Wish
10 year-old Ezra, living with a brain tumor, was given his wish — and more — by the designers, artists and staff of Blizzard Entertainment, the makers of the wildly successful online game, World of Warcraft. The Make-A-Wish foundation wanted to help grant Ezra’s wish to become the first outsider to create a new character for the game. Since the story broke in a local paper, the WoW community has rallied and cheered its newest star, whose father said, "I do believe it impacted the situation. It impacted his health and happiness." (OC Register – be sure to read the update) Thanks to my son Jack for submitting this story!
UN Nuclear Inspectors Allowed Full Access in N Korea
"North Korea’s cooperation was ‘excellent’, said a UN inspector on Friday after visiting a nuclear reactor with his 4-person team from the International Atomic Energy Agency. It was the first UN inspection of the reactor in five years and full access to all areas was allowed." (AFP)
News Anchor Refuses to Read Paris Hilton Story in On-Air Protest
EDITOR’S BLOG – Mika Brzezinski is my new hero! The MSNBC anchorwoman refused to read a Paris Hilton story chosen as the lead for her morning newscast this week. This video shows her trying to burn the script and finally ripping it, and later shredding an updated copy. The public protest against her editors’ news judgement has brought her praise from both viewers and media professionals alike. She says, "I had one woman send me an email that said she was weeping tears of joy that someone finally took a stand… We were making a statement on our show. I hope it will start to change something… We need to have an open discussion about what is news and what is not."
This edited version of Brzezinski’s on-air protest has been viewed more than 1.3 million times on YouTube.
World’s First High-Speed All-Electric Sport Utility Truck
Earth-friendly, fuel-efficient vehicles that produce no emissions may seem like a dream of the future. But several companies are already well on their way to introducing such vehicles in North America and around the world. Recently, more than 400 environmentalists, investors and celebrities gathered for the unveiling and induction of the only five-passenger, all-electric, freeway-speed sport utility vehicle at Los Angeles' famed Peterson Automotive Museum: The Phoenix Motorcars "SUT" or sport-utility truck.
Donations Pour in for Brittle-Bone Survivor
Donations are pouring in for the woman featured in a California newspaper and here on GNN (first read the original story here). "Gail Rennetty will get her electric wheelchair and her cable TV so she can again watch the Animal Planet… So many people wanted to help after reading in the Mercury News about the San Jose woman’s struggles with "brittle bone" disease that Rennetty said she was in total shock." (Mercury News) This story will make you cry for joy, Thanks Andrew for the link!
Brittle Bones Can’t Crack Woman’s Spirit
When Gail Rennetty was a baby, she cried every time her mother touched her. She had so many broken bones by the time she was 2 months old, police were convinced her mother was a child abuser. Her doctor knew it was a rare disease and predicted she would die before she reached 30, and never amount to anything. Now, 53 years old, Rennetty has defied the odds, with university honors, and is still getting the most out of life. An amazing and inspiring story of overcoming hardship by remaining feisty… (San Jose Mercury News – video and text)
Pilot’s Mission: Inspiration to Minorities
23-year-old Barrington Irving is claiming to be the youngest, and the first black man to circle the globe solo. His journey took 97 days in a plane he built himself with donated parts and named Inspiration. He plans to inspire other minority youths to pursue aviation…(Video by AP)
Fastest Mammal in North America Averts Extinction
We all heard yesterday that the bald eagle was taken off the endangered species list. (Hadn't heard? Here's the scoop on the eagle numbers, and also a GNN article on the decision to delist from last year.)
Here's some good news about another animal that was on the verge of extinction. America's fastest mammal, the Sonoran pronghorn, is backing away from the brink sooner than expected…
Florida Everglades Off the Danger List of World Heritage Sites
The World Heritage Committee announced that significant improvements in the preservation of the Everglades National Park in Florida, and of the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve in Honduras, were sufficient to warrant their removal from UNESCO’s list of endangered World Heritage Sites.
The committee, in its 31st meeting, reviewed the list of 830 World Heritage Sites, including 31 they have deemed in danger or under threat. Thanks in part to an $8 billion investment by the United States government and a Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, the Florida site, described as a river of grass, has been well on the road to recovery since its placement on the Danger List fourteen years ago.
The Everglades’ exceptional variety of water habitats has made it a sanctuary for a large number of birds and reptiles, including threatened species such as the manatee. It had been threatened by urban growth and pollution, as well as by the damage caused to Florida Bay in 1992 by Hurricane Andrew.
The Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, one of the few remaining tropical rainforests in Central America, has been rehabilitated over eleven years. The corrective measures, recommended by the World Conservation Union in 1996, helped restore the abundant and varied plant and wildlife that was under threat by encroachment of agriculture, timber trade and hunting. They also reclaimed a traditional way of life for the some 2,000 indigenous people of the mountainous forest.
The World Heritage Committee is the governing body of the 183 nation UNESCO World Heritage Convention, which seeks to identify, recognize and protect the world’s most significant natural and cultural heritage. Their website lists all the sites sorted by nation here.
RELATED: Congress Votes Overwhelmingly to Restore Everglades, November, 2000:
Rarely does support for environmental action arrive from such a broad base of citizens: Democrats and Republicans, landowners and environmentalists, farmers and home builders. Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Florida, called the plan “the biggest environmental restoration project in the history of the world.”
Feathers Fly in Tel Aviv Pillow Fighting
“Israelis try to cushion the effects of their daily stress by taking part in the third annual mass pillow fight. While Israeli forces attack in Gaza and the regional conflict seemed far from an end, residents of the coastal city of Tel Aviv engage in some stress-busting scuffles involving pillows.” (Video)
A Greener Way to Grow Green Lawns
Summer is here and you want to roll in the green grass with your loved ones, so have you considered letting go of those 40-pound bags of chemical fertilizers and bottles of scary weed killers? Let your grass out of its chemical prison so it can spread its roots. Here’s how:
Cheetahs to Enter Olympics?
If Oscar Pistorius gets his way there will be a pair of ‘cheetahs’ entering competition in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. Opposition to his dream is fierce, however. The cheetahs are thought to have an unfair advantage over normal competitors. Actually, these “cheetahs” are not the feline type, but rather the name given to a pair of j-shaped prosthesis Oscar will wear if he becomes the first amputee runner in the Olympic Games — Oscar, a.k.a., “The Fastest Thing on No Legs.”
The controversy over his desire to enter competition in the Olympics (he is a two-time medalist from the 2004 Paralympics) is heated by concern that he would have an unfair advantage — a testament to the progress made with limb prostheses in recent years…
The myoelectric hand is an excellent example of the technological advance made in this area. This device is capable of responding to brain commands via a computer chip and sensors attached to muscles on the chest and back and can provide the dexterity and control needed to tie a shoelace, for example. This device has already been built upon to include a full arm as well and earlier this year Claudia Mitchell, a former US marine who lost her arm in a motorcycle accident, was able to benefit from this device. To use it, surgeons had to re-route the motor nerves that once controlled her arm into muscles in her chest and side. In this situation, if she tries to move her arm or hand, specific muscles in her chest or side will contract and a myoelectric sensor attached to the muscle detects the contraction and sends the appropriate message to the arm or hand. With this device she was able to regain some significant abilities, such as being able to cut up food at a pace four times faster than someone with a more traditional prosthesis.
A bionic foot and ankle was recently patented by the researchers at the Biomechatronics Lab at MIT that attempts to match the function of a normal foot during walking and over a variety of different terrain, such as stairs. The ankle contains a motor that controls the angle and force absorbed and released with each step. A similar device from Ossur called the Proprio Foot is already on the market and it touts the ability for users to place both feet behind their knees when getting up or sitting down into a chair (the most natural position) and when walking it automatically lifts the toes at the appropriate point in the step to ensure sufficient ground clearance and create a balanced gait. The same company also offers a bionic knee that interactively responds to changes in the walking speed, applied weight and terrain.
But what of Oscar Pistorius? The International Association of Athletics Federations has given the South African the green light to compete in 2008 reversing a decision earlier this year that banned any athlete from competing that would benefit from artificial help. But while the go ahead has been given, the scientific investigation into the technical advantages of his “cheetahs” continues. As long as this investigation shows that there is no technical advantage and more critically, if Oscar can qualify for entry, the world will have even more of a reason to watch the most spectacular sporting event on Earth come 2008.
Additional Information: Ossur – www.ossur.com
Oscar Pistorius’s Web site
Michael Little works in analytical chemistry and has almost 20 years experience in the research based pharmaceutical industry. Michael resides in Laval, Quebec, with his wife and three children. Michael has written occasional science articles for GNN since 2007.
Good News Network Now on FaceBook
Facebook now is home to the Good News Network!
The second largest social networking site on the web, Facebook boasts more than 25 million members. Now it can aid the mission of the Good News Network by spreading our positive news messages of the world. Check out this screen shot of the GNN Group at Facebook…
Americans Set Record for Charity in 2006
"Americans gave nearly $300 billion to charitable causes last year, setting a record and besting the 2005 total that had been boosted by a surge in aid to victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma and the Asian tsunami." (AP via USA Today)
Encouraging Signs That Elder Care is On the Mend
Finally, for the first time, I have hope.
I started my career in the aging field in the "mean old days" of the 1970s, when much of the care in nursing homes was horrible. Today, the quality is better in home care, residential care and nursing homes. It's still not good enough, but thanks to a few providers with a new philosophy, there's a growing movement that's proving it's possible to provide not just good but exceptional eldercare…
Eco-Friendly Bamboo Bikes: a New Way to Pedal
Bamboo has captured the imagination of American manufacturers — providing the material for everything from plush tee shirts to baseball bats to flooring. Count in a bicycle shop owner whose bamboo bikes could "provide rudimentary transport — and jobs — in the emerging world," where bamboo is abundant. (LA Times) Thanks to Andrew for the link! (photo: Iron Man Bike of bamboo)
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New Environmentally Friendly Jet Planned
"A new British low-cost airline easyJet has unveiled a design for their planned ecoJet that would be 25 percent quieter and emit 50 percent less carbon dioxide and 75 percent less nitrous oxide than today’s newest short-haul airliners." (Live Science)
