Whatever Happened to Good News in America?

 

Turn on the news in America and you might start wondering if anything good ever happens anymore.

Somebody is attacking a politician. A politician is attacking somebody else. Democrats are blaming Republicans. Republicans are blaming Democrats. Then five people come on television to explain why the other five people are destroying America.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Kansas, a 12-year-old kid probably saved a dog from a river.

Nobody heard about it.

Apparently the dog wasn’t registered with a political party.

That’s what seems missing from America today: ordinary good news.

People are still helping their neighbors. Kids are still graduating from college. Somebody just beat cancer. Somebody opened a small business after saving for ten years. Somebody adopted a child. Somebody wrote a beautiful song. Somebody worked two jobs and finally bought a house.

Those stories exist.

But anger has become one of America’s biggest forms of entertainment.

And the numbers suggest people are getting tired of it.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in December 2025 found that 52% of American adults said they were worn out by the amount of news, and 60% said they had reduced the amount of news they consume.

Government and politics also dominate what Americans regularly encounter. In a March 2025 Pew survey, 62% said they got government and political news extremely often or often—far higher than the percentages for science and technology, business, sports or entertainment.

Maybe we’re not tired of America.

Maybe we’re tired of hearing America argue.

There is a difference.

Politics matters. Presidents matter. Congress matters. Elections matter. We need journalists investigating government, corporations and powerful people. Nobody is suggesting replacing serious journalism with puppies riding skateboards.

Although I’d watch that.

The problem comes when seemingly everything becomes political combat.

A bridge gets built and we’re arguing about which party deserves credit.

Gas prices move and somebody gets blamed.

A company closes.

Blame somebody.

A company opens.

Take credit.

A celebrity says something stupid and suddenly 200 million people are expected to choose a side before lunch.

We don’t even have conversations anymore. We have teams.

And the media didn’t create political division all by itself. Audiences participate too. We click on things that make us angry. Social media rewards attention. Politicians know controversy gets coverage. Commentators know outrage keeps people watching.

Everybody feeds the machine.

Then everybody complains about the machine.

Trust hasn’t exactly benefited. Gallup reported that trust in the mass media fell to 28% in 2025, its lowest measurement at that point in the organization’s long-running series.

Maybe America could use something radical:

Tell us something good once in a while.

Tell me about the firefighter who saved somebody.

Tell me about the teacher who spent her own money helping her students.

Tell me about the 70-year-old who started a business.

Tell me about the musician nobody knows who wrote a great song.

Tell me about somebody who screwed up his life for 30 years and finally got it together.

Those stories matter too.

They don’t mean we ignore corruption, wars, crime, poverty or political disagreement. Journalism shouldn’t pretend everything is wonderful when it isn’t.

But America isn’t only Washington, D.C.

America is millions of people getting up every morning, going to work, raising families, creating things, fixing things, helping people and occasionally doing something remarkable without demanding anybody vote for them.

Maybe that’s the positive story we’re missing.

America hasn’t necessarily stopped doing good things.

We may have simply stopped putting them on the front page.

— Elvis Nash