Auto Amazon Links: No products found.
Positive News has launched a seven-week initiative aimed at engaging its audience and broader community to examine what truly matters to people and how the media can foster a healthier connection with the world. This listening project seeks to understand public values and rethink the role journalism plays in reflecting those priorities.
News outlets regularly decide which stories take center stage, often emphasizing topics like politics, crime, war, and the economy. These subjects tend to be presented through narratives of conflict, crisis, threat, and competition. While important, such coverage offers only a partial view of reality. The focus of media not only highlights particular events but also influences public perception, shaping what individuals notice, what they believe others care about, and how empowered they feel. Journalism is inherently subjective, involving choices about which voices are amplified and what kind of relationship with the world this fosters.
The Positive News: What Next? project questions these conventional assumptions by inviting community members to help define the future direction of the outlet. Central to this effort is the launch of the Positive News values survey, which draws on Schwartz’s theory of basic human values, a framework used in social psychology to identify core motivations people hold. Participants who complete the survey receive a personal profile outlining the principles that guide their worldview. This initiative explores values-aware journalism—the understanding that all media content reflects particular values and these editorial decisions shape perceptions of what is important.
Traditional news often prioritizes themes like status, competition, and power, but research indicates that most people value community, equality, connection, care for others, and the environment more highly. Positive News has long adopted a constructive journalism approach, aiming to present a more complete reality by highlighting progress, solutions, and human potential rather than focusing solely on problems. Now, the organization seeks to expand this model by embedding community values more deeply into its content and activities. As a community benefit society, Positive News is committed to serving the public interest rather than private shareholders. This project is intended to create a media platform that genuinely benefits its audience by responding to their needs and aspirations through ongoing dialogue and transparent editorial choices.
Sean Wood, CEO of Positive News, emphasizes the challenges faced by journalism today, including low public trust and the overwhelming nature of much media content. He reflects, “We want to better understand what people are truly looking for from journalism at a time when trust in media is low.” This initiative is not just about the kind of stories covered but about imagining what a media outlet that truly serves its community might look like. Positive News intends to share progress during the project and publish a comprehensive report on the insights gained, with the hope of shaping the next chapter of their work in collaboration with their audience
Read the full article on Positive News here: Read More
Auto Amazon Links: No products found.