A Novel News Idea

It seems when I grew up I always heard my parents explain the evening news programs and their necessity to watch them during my shows in the following manner; ‘We need to stay current on what is going on in the world around us. We want to be informed citizens.’ They would then proceed with watching an hour or so of the local and national news shows. Often my sister and I would watch along with them to help us be better and more informed citizens. So it seems logical to expect that I would do the same when it came to the news and viewing habits of my children; and for a time, it was that way. Recently, however, say in the last five to seven years, the news is no longer a place for families to get their news and information…FAR from it! The news now is in your face, graphic, disturbing, sensationalized, and all too often scary to anyone other than adults (and even then, things are scary around the world to me too!).
My seven year old daughter said to me the other evening after I explained to her that she would need to go read her book in the other room while I got through the headlines of the evening; “Why, Dad? Don’t you want me to be an informed citizen?” Straight from the mouth of babes, huh?! That got me to thinking, why do our news services always feel it necessary to end their broadcasts with ‘good news’? It seems to me that an occasional lead-in story with a happy ending or a cute little animal would serve us all well in this time of terrorists and nuclear testing.
Though I am not so naive as to think for one second that the world my children are growing up in is even close to that of my childhood, it would be nice from time to time to have a throw-back day like they do in sports and find something uplifting to talk about on our news broadcasts and bring back that feeling of family once again.