Redefining the ‘news’

Researching complex topics and demysifying useful information, sharing the stories of real people, writing, editing, polishing—these are some of the reasons I went into my profession. But when I carried out my master's in journalism, the drawn out United States-led war on Iraq was front-page news, while stories in health care (which had always been my area of interest) tended to focus on sensationalising research and scaring people away from just about every food (though to be fair, a large majority of our food has in fact been tampered with to a worrying degree—but that's a discussion for another day). I quickly identified a negative undertone in the culture of news because good news in the world of journalism isn't ‘news’. But, it should be. Several years back, I met the author of Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit, who discussed all of the negative events or ‘news’ that were prevented by the efforts of activists, and how the absence of news is never reported. The result of this is that a light is never really shone on the impact of much of the great work being done.