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Last Friday, the High Court ruled that phone hacking and other unlawful information gathering (“UIG”) occurred throughout Piers Morgan's editorship at Mirror Group Newspapers and that Morgan knew about it and published articles he knew came from it.

Below, the Claimants’ legal analyst Dr Evan Harris annotates Morgan's public statement on the judgement. The court confirmed that unlawful information gathering took place right up to 2011 - including during the Leveson Inquiry.

It resulted in damages for Prince Harry and others. The outcome conflicts with Morgan's public narrative… 

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Piers Morgan's Statement on Phone Hacking, Unpicked

“I've got a short statement for you. A judge in the high court in London has ruled on various cases, including Prince Harry's claim against Mirror group newspapers [actually part of - a sample of 33 of 148 articles in his claim], where I was an editor (actually the editor of the Daily Mirror from 1995-2004) until 2004.”

The judge found that hacking at Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) started in ..1995.

“The judgement finds there is just one article relating to the prince published in the Daily Mirror during my entire nine year tenure as editor that he thinks may have involved some unlawful information gathering.”

This is misleading. There are still 19 articles from the period of Morgan’s editorship of the Daily Mirror, in the remaining 115 articles in Prince Harrys’ claim which have not yet been ruled on by the Judge.

In addition, there are dozens more claimants with hundreds of contested articles from his period as Editor, and his former employers have previously paid out millions of pounds of damages in hundreds of settlements to previous claimants for unlawfully obtained articles in the Daily Mirror in that period.

“To be clear, I had then and still have zero knowledge of how that particular story was gathered.”

Even if we believe him, which we don’t, this pleaded ignorance (i.e. not knowing the source of any of his scoops) would simply make him the worst Editor ever to have afflicted the newsrooms of Fleet Street.

“All his other claims against the Daily Mirror under my editorship were rejected.”

False. There are 19 other articles in his claim alone and hundreds more articles in dozens more claims still to be ruled on.

“With regard to the judge's other references [they were excoriating findings, not mere references – paras 330-345 here] to me, in his judgement, I also want to reiterate, as I've consistently said for many years now, I've never hacked a phone…"

It is about much more than hacking voicemails – it covers other unlawful information gathering – UIG.

“…or told anybody else to hack a phone, and nobody has produced any actual evidence to prove that I did.”

But that is not what is alleged or what the judge found. The allegation – which the judge found proved - is that he knew about voicemail interception (VMI) and UIG, and knowingly published articles based on it.

‘News Corp Was Out to Get Me’: Chris Huhne Condemns Murdoch Empire after Settlement for Phone-Hacking and Intrusion

The media company has now paid to settle a claim that alleges the involvement in, or at least the knowledge of, illegal activities by senior executives

Brian Cathcart
Withering Verdict

This is some of what the Judge said, firstly in relation to an Ulrika-Sven story in 2002 that Morgan dined off:

Judge: "Melanie Cantor, who worked as an agent and publicist at the time, gave evidence about Mr Morgan. Her evidence was not challenged by MGN. She said that she had a close and trusting professional relationship with Mr Morgan and was aware that he had obtained confidential information about her client, Ulrika Jonsson. She said that Mr Morgan always seemed to be the first person to know about events that had recently happened, on a repeated basis.

"She later discovered that there were PI invoices naming her and her associates and over 400 calls to her mobile phone from Ms Weaver, Mr Scott, Mr Buckley and others who have been convicted or found to have been involved in phone hacking. Her name was in Mr Scott’s and Mr Buckley’s Palm Pilots."

The judge adds: "The inference is an obvious one: Ms Cantor’s phone and the phones of her associates were hacked and the obviously confidential and sensitive information obtained was passed to Mr Morgan, who must have known how it had been obtained and made use of it."

The Judge then summarises what the evidence shows. It is worthy of note that while the civil standard of proof is “more likely than not”, the Judge states “there is no doubt” which amounts to the criminal standard of proof of “beyond all reasonable doubt”.

He says: "There can be no doubt, therefore, that the editors of the newspapers knew about the VMI and UIG and were in a position to tell Ms Bailey or the board about it, but they obviously did not do so."

The Judge reiterates this later on: "As I have said, no adverse inference is necessary to resolve the question of whether the editors knew about phone hacking and related UIG. It is clear that they did, and it would have been astonishing if they did not, given the scale on which it was being carried on in the 2000s and the remarkable story lines that it produced. It is also clear that the senior editorial management were fully aware of the fact that PIs were being used at great expense to conduct illegal searches and of the extent of such use."

However, Morgan’s earlier denials (including sworn denials at the Leveson Inquiry) did include that he did not know about hacking and did not publish articles he knew came from hacking but he has now “reverse-ferreted” on that, but has tried to deceive his audience that his position is the same. It’s too late though. The Judge’s findings make clear that his evidence to Leveson was incorrect and knowingly so. There is a word for that.

Three MPs Investigating Phone Hacking Hacked During Their Investigation: ‘An Organised Attack on the Democratic Process’

Former Labour MP Paul Farrelly explains the circumstances surrounding a new legal investigation into whether members of Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), looking into phone-hacking and press criminality, were systematically hacked by Murdoch empire

Paul Farrelly
Misleading Beyond Belief

“I wasn't called as a witness - it's important for people to know this - by either side in the case. Nor was I asked to provide any statement. I would have very happily agreed to do either or both of those things had I been asked.”

Only MGN could call him as a witness, as whoever calls him (voluntarily or by compulsion) is not allowed to cross-examine him, so the Claimants could never call him – and he knows that.

So it seems he either refused a request from MGN or – as he claims – his erstwhile employer did not ask him. This can only be because they did not want him to testify in their defence. They knew if he gave truthful evidence it would not be helpful to their case. And ethically the lawyers could not take and serve a statement that they knew to be false.

Instead, MGN had no choice but to take the “hit” of not challenging many of the Claimants’ witnesses. Sadly, we were all denied the spectacle of Morgan crumbling under cross-examination. His main technique in interviews - of over-talking his questioner - would not work in Court. Even that strategy fails sometimes, as I was able to show.

“Nor have I had a single conversation with any of the Mirror group lawyers throughout the entire legal process.”

Even this assertion is contradicted – by his own side. The Judge makes clear that MGN has been in touch with him and obtained evidence.

Judge: "It appears from what MGN volunteered about not calling Mr Morgan that he was not invited to give evidence on MGN’s behalf to avoid a “side show” distracting from the key issues at trial, though MGN’s pleaded case does state that MGN had obtained evidence from Mr Morgan about the allegations."

If it was not an MGN lawyer who asked him for evidence then that would be odd, but he would still be “tap-dancing through the raindrops”.

“So, I wasn't able to respond to the many false allegations…"

…Allegations which the Judge found to be true, and to say the allegations are false are an allegation of perjury against the witnesses the judge found to be truthful…

“...That were spewed about me in court by old foes of mine with an axe to grind…"

Melanie Cantor was an old friend of his, as was Ben Wegg-Prosser and David Seymour. Only Alastair Campbell and Omid Scobie could be said to be “old foes”, and the Judge found them to be credible and their evidence truthful.

“…most of which inexplicably were not even challenged in my absence by the Mirror Group counsel.”

Melanie Cantor and Ben Wegg-Prosser were not even called by MGN for cross-examination. That means they had to accept their evidence entirely. This was because they had no basis to challenge it, arguably because they knew it was true. It is far from “inexplicable”.

Litany of Slurs

“But I note the judge appears to have believed the evidence of Omid Scobie, who lied about me in his new book…"

A contested allegation is not a “lie”. Journalists have sources who may be correct or may not be correct in what they say. Of Messrs Scobie and Morgan, only one stands as a witness of truth by a Judge, and one stands accused by judicial findings of giving false evidence under oath. People in glass houses should put down the shot-gun.

“…and he lied about me in court.” 

This is an allegation of perjury, and because the Judge has found Mr Scobie to be truthful in his evidence, Morgan appears to have a libel death wish.

“…and the whole world now knows him to be a deluded fantasist.”

Morgan descends to mere abuse when he is rattled. Again I give you this.

Prince Harry Takes a Stand for Us All: ‘If They’re Supposedly Policing Society, Who On Earth is Policing Them?’

The crisis and corruption in the British press is one of the biggest, ongoing scandals of our time. Byline Times tips its hat to Prince Harry

Hardeep Matharu

“And he believed the evidence of Alastair Campbell, another proven liar  who spun this country into an illegal war.”

Whatever one thinks of Mr Campbell and the Iraq war, it is a false statement that he is a proven liar. He would say that he is not a liar, but objectively it is factually wrong to say it is “proven”.

Again, it is Morgan who was sacked from his job for publishing false allegations about the Iraq war. And it is Morgan whose evidence at the Leveson Inquiry is contradicted by a High Court judgement of fact.

“Finally, I want to say this. Prince Harry's outrage at media intrusion into the private lives of the royal family is only matched by his own ruthless, greedy and hypocritical enthusiasm for doing it himself. He talked today about the appalling behaviour of the press, but this is a guy who has repeatedly trashed his family in public for hundreds of millions of dollars, even as two of its most senior and respected members were dying, his grandparents. It's hard to imagine, frankly, more appalling behaviour than that.”

The usual rant which is pure abuse. It should be contrasted with the measured terms of Prince Harry’s statement outside Court.

“As for him saying this is a good day for truth, the Duke has been repeatedly exposed in recent years as someone who wouldn't know the truth if it slapped him around his California-tanned face.”

Prince Harry has never been “exposed” as a liar or perjurer. People in glass houses should not lob grenades.

“He demands accountability for the press, but refuses to accept any for himself for smearing the royal family - his own family - as a bunch of callous racists…”

Prince Harry did not make this claim – this was a press version of what he said, which was then ascribed to him.

“…without producing a shred of proof to support those disgraceful claims. He also says he's on a mission to reform the media when it's become clear his real mission, along with his wife, is to destroy the British monarchy. And I will continue to do whatever I can to stop them. Merry Christmas.”

And like the coward he is – Morgan scurried away, taking no questions. 

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As part of our winter membership drive, we are pulling back the curtain on what we do here at Reasons to be Cheerful. This is part three of a three-part series. You can find part one here and part two here. In this final installment, we bring you a conversation between Executive Editor Will Doig and Editorial Director Rebecca Worby about growing awareness of solutions journalism and what makes stories resonate. Want to learn more about our membership program? Click here.

Rebecca Worby: In the early days of RTBC, there was much less awareness about solutions journalism. How has awareness grown since RTBC launched?

Will Doig: A lot of big publications have added a section specifically for solutions stories in the last few years — like the New York Times section Headway — and then some of those stories get filtered onto the homepage. From the reader’s perspective, these stories might not even register as “solutions journalism” since they’re positioned as just another news story, which is exactly how they should be treated, in my opinion.

WD: What makes a RTBC story a RTBC story? 

RW: A RTBC story will tell you not just what the solution to a problem is, but how that solution was implemented. Ideally, it’ll do that in a way that feels conversational and approachable: You don’t need to be an expert on sustainable timber construction to understand and enjoy a story about the Portland airport’s new wooden roof. 

In November, Hannah Wallace reported for us about the Portland airport’s new sustainable timber roof. Courtesy of Port of Portland

At its best, a RTBC story is truly a story — that is, a narrative that you want to read from start to finish. Our stories may not always be as cheerful as the name suggests, but they do tend to be upbeat, and I hope they give the reader a sense of hope and buoyancy. 

RW: What types of stories do you find that our audience is most drawn to?

WD: Climate, the environment, green energy — these have been our most popular topics since day one. They’re not only huge issues that affect everyone, they’re awash in promising solutions that often have a good narrative behind them. 

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We saw a jump in interest in social justice stories during and after the 2020 protests, but because those solutions often aren’t as cut and dry, I think it’s harder for readers to walk away from them with a feeling that something has been solved. They might sometimes feel like they’re describing incremental progress in an intractably unfair world.

WD: What’s a common misconception about solutions journalism or RTBC?

RW: When people hear the name Reasons to be Cheerful, or when they hear about solutions journalism more generally, some might leap to the conclusion that our stories are all light and fun — or, worse, that we’re sugar-coating the truth. But our stories are always rigorously reported, and they don’t shy away from the negative when necessary. For example, we strive to always address not just what’s working well with a particular solution, but also the limitations or challenges it faces. 

WD: What’s a story from this year that really resonated with our readers and why do you think it did?

RW: Contributing Editor Peter Yeung’s story about what Barcelona is doing to deal with overtourism was among our most popular this year. It came out in the middle of the summer, a time when a lot of readers are traveling (or dreaming of their next trip), and it spoke to an issue that a lot of us have experienced first-hand: What happens when a beloved place is, well, loved a little too much? 

Interestingly, it’s not the most cut-and-dry solution story — as Peter writes, improvements in the impacts of tourism are tough to quantify — but I think there’s something satisfying about learning what a historic, beautiful city is doing to preserve itself. 

Park Güell, designed by Antoni Gaudí, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site one of Barcelona’s most popular tourist attractions. Credit: dvoevnore / Shutterstock

RW: What’s a story from our archives that you still find yourself thinking about a lot?

WD: In 2020 our writer Klaus Sieg wrote about Berlin’s effort to incentivize residents to buy things used instead of new, and to repair their stuff instead of throwing it away. It was technically a story about policies that encourage reuse, but what it was really about was an entire city — from its government agencies on down to its residents — transforming its mindset around wasteful, consumption-oriented lifestyles.

RW: One of the first things I edited for RTBC was Elizabeth Hewitt’s story about “beaver dam analogues” in Colorado. Essentially, human impacts have degraded ecosystems — in this case, by wiping out beaver populations — and now humans are mimicking nature to try to restore those ecosystems and make them more adaptable to climate change. It’s a low-tech solution, and one that could ultimately help welcome beavers back to these places. I love when a solution is about undoing damage and helping nature do its thing.

RW: What’s a response from a reader that has stayed with you or impacted your thinking about the work that we do?

WD: We get a lot of notes from teachers who say they use Reasons to be Cheerful in their classrooms, which is really gratifying. One specific response that’s always stuck with me was from a soldier in a war zone who said he reads us to avoid losing hope — even though that’s just one person, it feels like a big impact.

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RW: I really appreciate the notes from teachers, too. I also enjoy hearing from folks whose life or work is closely tied to something we’ve covered. One of our writers recently told us that her mother was sharing Michaela Haas’ article about “The Power of Sharing Patients’ Life Stories With Caregivers” with all her friends. Old-fashioned word-of-mouth — I loved hearing that.

RW: A lot of online magazines struggle, and many shrank or disappeared after the pandemic, but RTBC just keeps growing. Why do you think this is?

WD: I think our name helps — we have a newsletter that has over 130,000 subscribers and being able to drop something that literally says “Reasons to be Cheerful” into someone’s inbox once a week almost feels like cheating. 

Aside from that, I think the hunger for this type of journalism is real. There’s more of it than there used to be, but clearly not enough. We also just work really hard to make every story as good as it can possibly be, so maybe there’s an element of quality winning the day, as well.

The post Our Editors Discuss Solutions and Storytelling appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

As part of our winter membership drive, we are pulling back the curtain on what we do here at Reasons to be Cheerful. In this story, Contributing Editor Peter Yeung explores the evolution of solutions journalism and what we know about its impacts. This is part two of a three-part series. Click here to read part one and here to read part three. Want to learn more about our membership program? Click here.

When Karen McIntyre began her PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012, she had never heard of solutions journalism. But one day a professor asked her to compile a list of “positive news” websites for a media research project.

“What I initially found was not solutions journalism at all,” says McIntyre. “It was good news journalism. Happy news. ‘Fireman saves cat’ kind of news.”

But later, while carrying out that research McIntyre came across the idea of “serious news done in a constructive way” — and her curiosity spiked. For her, it was the polar opposite of the media industry’s status quo: rather than agonizing superficially over the negatives of the day, this was about scrutinizing how and why things went right.

Earlier this year, Yeung traveled to Lima, Peru to report on a surf therapy scheme. Courtesy of Peter Yeung

“It was a breath of fresh air,” says McIntyre, who then channeled her energies into finding out as much about this nascent practice as she could.

But there was little out there. In fact, she could find no academic research about the field at all. So in 2015, McIntyre published her dissertation analyzing the positive psychological effects of “constructive journalism” and “solution information” on the readers of news stories — to her knowledge, the first scientific research of its kind.

“These days there’s so much more research out there,” adds McIntyre, who is now an associate professor of journalism at Virginia Commonwealth University. (A list compiled by her colleague Kyser Lough contains 246 pieces of research to date.)

Ever since its beginnings, the journalism industry has sought to change society for the better and pick apart the merits and pitfalls of policies and projects around the world. Yet a fast-expanding movement is transforming the industry by promoting an approach to journalism centered on assessing responses to society’s problems – from the climate emergency to plastic waste, gender inequality and cultural division.

Advocates argue there’s an urgent need to reform the media amid a crisis of financial sustainability, plummeting trust, societal disharmony and a wider failure of journalism to serve the public interest. A survey by Pew Research in 2021 found 42 percent of US adults have no trust in information from national news organizations (up from 35 percent in 2019). More recently, the Reuters Institute 2023 digital news report, a survey of 93,000 people (who identify as news consumers) across 46 countries by Oxford University, found that 36 percent say they also often or sometimes actively avoid the news.

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The solution? It’s complicated. But, aptly enough, solutions journalism could play a significant role.

“There are no simple solutions to what is a multifaceted story of disconnection and low engagement in a high-choice digital environment, but our data suggest that less sensationalist, less negative and more explanatory approaches might help, especially with those who have low interest in news,” the Reuters Institute report concluded.

In fact, a separate Reuters Institute survey of 303 media executives from 53 countries in January 2023 found that 73 percent of those leaders planned to publish more solutions and constructive journalism in the future in order to combat so-called “news avoidance.”

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Professor McIntyre describes solutions and constructive journalism as two strands of a kind of “socially responsible” reporting. They both aim to remedy “news fatigue and perceived negativity bias,” she says, and together represent a shift away from conventional, “just the facts”-style reporting to a more contextual approach, where “journalists consider the bigger picture and play a more interpretive role.”

Two organizations have been at the heart of this emerging movement: The Solutions Journalism Network (SJN), a US-based nonprofit that was established in 2013, and the Constructive Institute, which was founded in 2017 and is based at Denmark’s Aarhus University. 

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While interpretations vary, solutions journalism reporting tends to follow the four pillars defined by the SJN: the response to a problem; insight learned from that response; evidence showing the response works; and an analysis of the response’s limitations. The wider-ranging constructive journalism includes solutions journalism as one of its components, but also should include multiple perspectives. A constructive journalism story is framed on the positive rather than negative aspects of communities involved and attempts to eschew simplicity in favor of nuance.

“Solutions and constructive journalism are different, but they fit together very well,” says Lisa Urlbauer, head of the journalism training programs at the Bonn Institute, a German nonprofit focused on constructive journalism that launched in March 2022. “They have this idea that we must put people’s needs at the heart of our journalism.”

There’s no doubt that there’s been a huge shift towards solutions-focused reporting. In recent years, the New York Times has launched Headway, an initiative “exploring the world's challenges through the lens of progress” and the Washington Post has created a section dedicated to climate solutions. In April, the New Yorker ran a special edition on climate solutions, and in October, NPR dedicated an entire week of coverage to solving the climate crisis. Publications such as NextCity, Grist and Mongabay have announced shifts towards solutions reporting, the last of which is launching a dedicated solutions desk. Meanwhile, Reasons to be Cheerful, one of the world’s first and few solutions journalism-only outlets, has been in action since 2019.

More concretely, the SJN’s story tracker page, a non-exhaustive list of stories that adhere to its pillars of solutions journalism, contains 15,600 articles that have been vetted internally. In addition, the network says it has trained 47,000 journalists across North America, Europe, Africa and Latin America, partnering with news organizations and journalism schools to help encourage the take-up.

“The industry has taken pretty huge steps generally,” says Allen Arthur, a solutions reporter and author of the SJN’s flagship newsletter Above the Fold.

In Northern Peru, Yeung reported on a deadly outbreak of dengue fever (and responses to it). Courtesy of Peter Yeung

Arthur, who often writes about and works with formerly incarcerated people, was himself hugely influenced by the new approach to reporting. “I had never thought about changing the whole structure of the story itself,” he says. “Instead I realized I could do journalism to help a community reach its goals and navigate obstacles.”

The Bonn Institute, whose initiative is centered on a close partnership with German media outlets including national broadcaster Deutsche Welle, characterizes that shift as a kind of Journalism 2.0 that should be the industry norm. 

“It’s a second wave of digitization,” says Urlbauer. “For us, fostering better debate is a more modern kind of reporting. There are many people in society who do not feel adequately heard by mainstream journalism, and we need to broaden our approach.”

However, while investment into the approach has ramped up massively, the evidence of solutions and constructive journalism’s impact is less clear-cut. 

For one, the goals of the movement are various and subject to debate: to build trust, to create a more inclusive industry, to catalyze the uptake of successful solutions, to counteract stereotypes, to improve readers’ mental health, to reduce polarization and division in society, or perhaps to make the media more financially sustainable. What research there is has tended to be low-level in scope or focused only on certain areas.

“In every experiment that has been done in English that we could find, there was a significant impact on audiences’ emotions,” says McIntyre, who published a review of the literature involving experiments on solutions journalism in August. “They make people more positive or less negative. That was clear.”

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While those findings are useful, they are limited. In fact, 17 of 22 studies McIntyre analyzed focused on the emotional impact of solutions journalism. Only one looked at the impact of solutions journalism on trust. But for many practitioners, the goal of solutions journalism is not to be “feel-good” or “positive” — but rather to create change.

“Solutions journalism is not good news per se,” says Arthur. “It is not this big wonderful, happy ending. It should be something we can learn from.”

Small-scale research commissioned by the SJN in 2020 found that of the 628 people surveyed across the US, 51 percent said they prefer “solution” stories compared to the 32 percent who prefer “problem” stories and the 17 percent with no preference. Eighty-three percent of respondents said they trusted a solutions journalism story they viewed, compared to 55 percent who said the same about the problem-focused story.

However, the limits of the research does not mean a tangible difference isn’t being made. In fact, McIntyre argues there’s little evidence that the approach doesn’t work, whereas more and more outlets are taking it up and there are many examples of solutions reporting creating impact. “I’m not really seeing negatives,” she says. “We have reason to say that solutions journalism is useful and beneficial.”

More recent findings have also responded to some of those concerns. A study of 348 US undergraduate students by the University of Maryland last year found exposure to solutions journalism was “positively associated” with the increased likelihood to support collective action to fight for better policy. Other research has found it has improved coverage of gender violence and immigrants as well as conflict reporting.

The SJN also recently launched an Impact Tracker containing numerous, robust examples of how solutions reporting has led to change – from encouraging authorities to replicate schemes pioneered elsewhere to millions of dollars of donor support for organizations implementing solutions.

Perhaps a more significant hurdle, however, is the fact that almost all of the research is focused in the Global North: 64 percent of research identified by McIntyre was based in North America and Europe. And that is reflective of overall adoption of and support for solutions reporting — with far less development in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

“Constructive journalism has gained a foothold in Africa but it’s not mainstream yet – far from it,” says Joy Muthoni, a Kenyan academic who analyzed the uptake of constructive journalism in Kenya for her PhD. “Journalists in Africa simply haven’t had the time and resources and training to properly adopt it yet.”

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The SJN’s Africa Initiative, which launched in 2020 to provide training and support to 60 African newsrooms including Nigeria Health Watch, has attempted to address that imbalance. And it has successfully led to nuanced reporting on vaccinations, malnutrition, sexual health, and more across Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda.

But Muthoni believes that model is a tricky tightrope to walk.

“I would be as bold to say that the trajectory of constructive journalism in the East African context is solely being driven by Western organizations,” she says. “That can be problematic in many ways. It’s like a new form of colonialism.”

Nonetheless, Muthoni believes that the continent would benefit from a constructive and solutions-oriented approach to journalism – following in the footsteps of the African philosophy of Ubuntu (the idea of shared humanity) as well as the history of development and peace journalism in previous decades. “But this isn’t something that happens overnight,” she says.

The SJN’s Arthur also admits there’s a long way to go when it comes to addressing the broader ingrained reporting methods such as “horse-race” coverage of political elections, focusing on candidates rather than issues that affect voters, and the fact that “terrible news will almost always be the lead items and win all of the awards.”

A decade on from its foundation, however, the SJN has undoubtedly played a role in “systematizing and supercharging” solutions journalism, as Arthur puts it — and in November the nonprofit announced its first-ever awards, representing another key landmark in the effort to make journalism more valuable, kind and impactful.

“We don’t know how solutions journalism is going to grow and evolve in the next decade,” says Arthur. “But I think the quality of stories is getting better and better and the practice is growing in incredible ways.”

The post How Solutions Journalism Is Sparking Change appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

As part of our winter membership drive, we are pulling back the curtain on what we do here at Reasons to be Cheerful. In this story, Contributing Editor Michaela Haas shares her perspective on solutions journalism. This is part one of a three-part series. Click here to read part two. Read part three here. Want to learn more about our membership program? Click here.

At the turn of this century, New York Times reporter Tina Rosenberg had uncovered a massive scandal but couldn’t convince her editor to publish her research: The price for HIV medication had soared. Thousands of patients in the Global South were dying because they could not afford the expensive treatment. “What people didn’t know was that the Clinton administration was colluding with the pharma industry to keep the prices artificially inflated,” the Pulitzer Prize-decorated Rosenberg says. Her editor at the New York Times Magazine agreed that the practice was scandalous but still, he was not willing to “print yet another depressing AIDS story!” 

Rosenberg didn’t give up. Instead, she wrote a feature about a country that defied the pressure, produced the life-saving medication in its own labs and distributed it for free, effectively halving the death rate: Brazil.  

The success of that New York Times cover story, “Look at Brazil,” was phenomenal: The US government changed its policy and the life-saving antiretrovirals became affordable in the global South. “This is exactly the principle,” Rosenberg said at a conference of the Solutions Journalism Network in Sundance, Utah, where I first met her: “Instead of just calling out a problem, we ask: Who does it better?”

Rosenberg suspected that the solutions principle would make sense for other topics, too. “The idea is too good to keep it to ourselves,” her colleague David Bornstein agreed, and in 2013, they co-founded the New York-based Solutions Journalism Network (SJN), which offers training and support for solutions journalism. 

A little over five years ago, SJN retweeted a story of mine about finding post-traumatic growth. I had to look up what the network stood for. On its website, I read its definition of solutions journalism as “rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.” I was instantly hooked. It’s an evidence-driven approach that focuses on reproducible, effective solutions while not shying away from revealing limitations and shortcomings. 

“I honestly don’t think I would still be passionate about my job if I mainly wrote about what’s wrong with the world,” Haas writes. Credit: Gayle M. Landes

Shortly after, I began training in solutions journalism, started writing a solutions column for the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and coordinated a local solutions journalism community in Los Angeles before joining Reasons to be Cheerful as contributing editor in the spring of 2021.

Reasons to be Cheerful is one of only a handful of publications that exclusively publishes true solutions journalism. As a reader, you might have initially come here for the “cheer” in the name, and you might not necessarily have heard of solutions journalism. But if you read us, you know you won’t find cute kitten videos on our site to cheer you up (though there is nothing cuter than kittens). 

Often, solutions journalism isn’t exactly “good” news. “Journalists are not interested in making people feel good,” Bornstein agrees. “In fact, when you look at a lot of solutions journalism, it’s not designed to make people feel better. It’s almost always stories about people who are performing poorly with problems compared to how they could be performing. It makes negligence egregious because there are other options. We think it is the most powerful way to shift journalism because accountability is our number-one job.”

The negativity bias has been well documented, including in one of my favorite books, the bestseller Factfulness by the late Hans Rosling: Readers believe the world is worse than it actually is. “When asked simple questions about global trends ― what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school ― we systematically get the answers wrong,” Rosling and his co-authors find. “So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.”

No matter which pressing problems I think of, there are always people, communities or institutions who are working to solve them, and it is simply good journalism to research them. Solutions journalism fails when it is naïve and pollyanna-ish, but it does make me feel better to know that we live in a world where smart people who care are looking for solutions.

“If we only ever write about how people fail, it’s no surprise they don’t want to read us anymore,” Bornstein adds. “It makes you feel less helpless to live in a society where people are thinking about doing better.” 

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That’s why I’m convinced that solutions journalism is also a solution for the trust crisis in journalism. According to the latest comprehensive Digital News Report by the Reuters Institute, only four out of ten news consumers say they trust most news most of the time, and more than a third (36 percent) of news consumers say they avoid the news often or sometimes. News avoiders are more likely to say they are interested in solutions-based journalism. 

“Journalism suffered an existential crisis along with its economic crisis, and solutions journalism is a way of responding to that, a way of increasing trust,” Rosenberg says. “People are assuming that trust is a function of accuracy, and we think it’s also a function of people feeling seen and respected by how the media portrays them.” 

Studies show that solutions reporting rarely increases click rates but it increases the reading time by 10 to 20 percent, strengthens credibility and boosts reader engagement. Karen McIntyre, professor for multimedia journalism at the Virginia Commonwealth University, discovered that solutions journalism is also an antidote to feeling helpless and hopeless. 

What began in Bornstein’s one-bedroom New York apartment a decade ago has now become an international network. SJN has trained more than 47,000 journalists in 160 countries, and curates a searchable database with solutions stories from 1,900 news organizations. 

“People want more solutions journalism [with a focus on the climate crisis],” writes Mitali Mukherjee, who co-authored Reuters’ report on climate news use. “And essentially, that means that they’re looking for not just positive stories, but they’re looking for what’s working in a community and what might be replicated in another.”

What I personally appreciate most about this kind of solutions-focused journalism is its impact. I continue to be amazed how the stories change me and the readers.

After I wrote about the pesticide use and labor abuse in the flower industry, I stopped buying red roses for my spouse. 

After I researched an in-depth feature on the climate diet (here’s a piece about the topic by my colleague Peter Yeung), I pivoted to plant-based meals. 

Since I wrote about solutions for the increase in pedestrian deaths in the US, I approach crosswalks much more carefully. 

I am a reporter, not an advocate. I won’t tell you what to make for dinner or who to vote for. But once we have all the facts clearly laid out with compelling evidence, it’s nearly impossible to ignore them.

I know this is the case for you, too, because you tell me so. Since focusing on solutions journalism, I’m getting significantly more mail from readers, and 99 percent of the people who write are genuinely engaged, interested, asking good questions or requesting more information so they can adopt an idea themselves. It’s fascinating and enriching! Very rarely do I get a letter that is insulting, and I believe this is also proof that we have earned your trust.

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Also, it’s just simply more fun and more meaningful for me to interview people who actively tackle climate change/pollution/mental health/biodiversity or any number of issues I care about. “As a journalist who is often disturbed by the sad stories that make the news daily, it comes as a relief to do something different — tell stories of hope that illuminate a gloomy world,” freelance solutions reporter Olayide Oluwafunmilayo Soaga shared on Solutions Journalism Day. 

I have been a reporter since I was 16 years old, writing stories about local politics and art reviews for my local paper after school. I honestly don’t think I would still be passionate about my job if I mainly wrote about what’s wrong with the world.

Also, in the last 20 years, I’ve lived in Europe, Asia and the US. I feel this is an advantage for solutions journalism because I have seen for myself how different countries grapple with problems that other countries have been able to solve. Switzerland has the lowest abortion rate in the world, Sweden recycles more glass (94 percent) than any other country, some countries have found solutions for rising gun deaths. Which means: Your country or community can solve the issue, too.

Bornstein sees solutions journalism as a way of shedding light on what’s possible, and maybe even changing what we see as possible. He quotes the saying that sunlight is the best disinfectant before adding, “Maybe it isn’t enough to shine a light on shortcomings, maybe journalism shouldn’t just play the role of disinfectant, but also photosynthesis.” 

And that is a reason to be cheerful.

The post How I Got Hooked on Solutions Journalism appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.