ARMCHAIR ARCHIVES – Somewhere, there must be some good news today

 Every once in a while, somebody comes up with the idea that the media should stop reporting on so much bad news and focus more on the good stuff. This column from the Armchair Mayor Archives was first published in The Kamloops News on Friday, Feb. 28, 1986.

TODAY IS GOOD-NEWS DAY.

More accurately, it’s called “Provincial Human Interest News Day.” Quesnel mayor Michael L. Pearce thinks the media concern themselves too much with economic and human tragedy, and suggested that, today, “radio and television stations and newspapers all over B.C. get involved in making a total effort in their news departments to broadcast or print only news items of positive human interest.”

Mayor Pearce must be a Rotarian. Rotarians, at the start of each meeting, sit around chucking what they call “Happy Bucks” into the club kitty. For example, “I’ve got a happy buck! My mother-in-law has laryngitis!”

But finding good news isn’t as easy as it sounds. News is often, by nature, negative. There are good news stories, to be sure. If a new job-producing plant is announced for Kamloops, it’s good news, assuming it isn’t going to pollute the atmosphere and poison the earth, and it’s reported along with everything else.

So are the citizens of the year, the new roads, the Expo blather, and all the wonderful things our kids do in school. But when a train crashes in Hinton, the school board budget gets slashed by a million bucks, or there’s another layoff at one of the mills, that’s big news.

And that kind of news is much easier to come by than the more positive stuff these days.

I suppose it would be possible to come up with a good-news page, though. We could report, for example, that there is 83 per cent employment in Kamloops. That a plane didn’t crash, that no trains collided, that a busload of passengers made it all the way from Barnhart Vale to town without incident. We could try to estimate how many children weren’t molested by perverts today.

Maybe we could do a nice little feature on somebody’s collection of dried kumquats that look like E.T., or send a team of investigative reporters to check into rumors that the year’s first crocus was seen in Brocklehurst.

CBC called this morning to do a check on what various newspaper editors were doing on their front pages. I had to report that The News was regrettably unable to abide by Mayor Pearce’s wishes.

Neither were the local electronic media. CFJC news director Doug Collins is running good news today, but only if there is any. “Our policy is that when there’s positive news, we report it,” said Collins.

“I don’t think people naturally like disheartening or tragic news, but we can’t ignore it. We have an obligation to report what’s happening in the world.”

CHNL’s Jim Harrison (who, by the way, is betting on a June provincial election) doesn’t think much of good news days, either. “The only good news rag that’s lasted is Pravda.”

Harrison pointed out that he wrote an editorial on the Quesnel mayor’s proposal the same day the shuttle blew up. If the shuttle disaster had happened today, he asks if Pearce suggests it should be ignored in favour of “human interest” news.

Actually, I think the media are taking Pearce too seriously. I think he’s having a bit of a joke by baiting media folks. At any rate, what you see on page 1 today is what you get.

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SPEAKING OF bad news, is there anything more boring that a federal budget?

Wednesday’s sermon from the mouth was pre-ambled with all the usual hype, expectations and fears. Michael Wilson showed off his new pair of shows while, presumably, being careful not to flash his budget to the television cameras.

The words “tough but fair” were dusted off while opposition politicians began warning of dire consequences. Reporters were locked away with the huge pile of paper that is the budget, and began writing their stories so that they could be released as Wilson began talking at around 1:30 p.m. our time.

The press did themselves proud. At rough count, Canadian Press reporters filed 116 stories on the budget. Southam News was more concise, keeping it to around a dozen. (You don’t think our wire desk editors weren’t just a little cranky by the time they finished sorting through that stuff?)

That’s much more than Canadians ever wanted to know. Basically, they want to know two things: are they going to have to pay more income tax, and is booze and tobacco going to cost more?

The answer being in the affirmative, their attitude is, let’s move onto something else.

Excitement over a public issue can often be assessed by the number of times this telephone rings. A lot of people like to call their newspaper to say what’s on their minds.

The phone rang only once here on the budget. The caller was Nelson Riis. I’ll let you guess what he thought of the budget.

One can fairly safely assume that the budget wasn’t a big thing with Kamloops folks. They were too busy shoveling mud out of their basements after this week’s flash floods to worry about who was shoveling what down on the farm.

Mel Rothenburger has been writing about Kamloops since 1970. He is a former mayor of Kamloops, former school board chair, former editor of The Kamloops Daily News, and a former director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He was awarded the Jack Webster Foundation’s lifetime achievement award in 2011 and was a 2019 Commentator of the Year finalist in the Webster Awards. Contact him at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.