The UN initiative is backed by NCVO chair Sir Martyn Lewis. Photograph: Dan Wooller/REX/Shutterstock
Listening to Radio 4’s ‘The Media Show’ this afternoon, I completely agree with Martyn Lewis’s notion of ‘constructive news’, even though both the interviewer, Steve Hewlett, and Joan Smith, the other journalist being interviewed were (pretty obviously) against it. This has got to be one of the main things wrong with society today: the proliferation of ‘bad news’, making the average individual feel disempowered and apathetic (‘everything is so bad, what can I do to stop it?’): it also makes people feel hopeless and sad, which can be seen in the prevalence of various forms of melancholia in today’s society. As Lewis said, it makes people feel as if the world is going down the plughole. (And people do feel this way, even though this was met with a laugh by Smith.)