The Current - Finding stories of progress in times of crisis

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

The news these days can feel relentlessly grim, but there are stories of progress and positivity buried in the bad. Angus Hervey, editor of a website called Fix The News, shares some of those stories and explains why the audience also has a role in helping the media to highlight them.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. The news headlines sometimes feel relentlessly grim. 2024 was no different. If anything, it may have felt worse. From a war in Gaza that's killed tens of thousands, to more floods and storms accelerated by climate change, to the rising tide of authoritarianism and disinformation. It can be difficult to find progress amidst all that. But that is what Angus Hervey does every day. He's the editor of a

website and newsletter called Fix the News. It's just published a recap of the year that was, a collection of 86 stories of progress from the past 12 months. Angus Hervey, good morning. Hi, thanks for having me. I understand the sub-headline on your list of these 86 stories of progress from the last year is, not everything that happened this year was terrible. Why is it important to remember that? Well, I think for most people, 2024 really did kind of feel terrible. And I think maybe a fun way to make sense of that is to look at some of the words of the year.

I think Oxford University Press chose brain rot. Australia's Macquarie Dictionary chose inshittification. And The Economist chose kakistocracy, which means government or rule by the very worst kind of people, which I think says it all. I personally think maybe the word of the year should have been crisis. Crisis in Gaza, crisis in Ukraine, climate crisis, democracy in crisis,

productivity crisis, immigration crisis, not to mention the information crisis, the crisis in media, crisis of meaning, and then my favourite, the simultaneous occurrence of several catastrophic events at once, which people are calling the polycrisis. So I think it seemed like last year that there have never been so many bad things happening in so many places at the same time. But what's really interesting is that if you look at the underlying drivers of progress and big global stories of change, that there were actually a lot of reasons for hope. Okay, tell us, give us an example of some of those, because that's what you spend your career doing now, is looking for these

stories of hope. And by the way, not just good news stories, right? Stories of progress. What's the difference? Yeah, well, I think that's a pretty important distinction. There's a world of difference between progress and what we typically call good news, because good news is usually what gets tacked on to the end of the bulletin. You know, the heartwarming story about the lost dog that finds its way home after three years or a community coming together to repaint the elderly neighbor's house. Those stories are supposed to make us feel better, but they always come at the end of 20 minutes of war and crisis and fighting and death and division. And so they often have the opposite effect because they feel small and insignificant because they're presented as the only bright spots in an otherwise seemingly very dark world. Progress is something else very different. It's the story of diseases being eliminated, entire species being brought back from the edge of extinction, or hundreds of millions of people getting access to electricity

for the first time. So they're profound transformations that reshape human possibility, but they're harder to report because they happen gradually over years or decades. They don't kind of fit into the news cycle. I have an example here of one of those kinds of stories from the world of global health. Have a listen. And some good news from the World Health Organization, which has announced that malaria has been completely eradicated in Egypt. That's a goal the country has been trying to achieve for the past century. Tell us about this story. Why does it matter? Well, 2024 actually brought a number of extraordinary victories

against some of humanity's oldest diseases. So the country of Jordan became the first country ever to eliminate leprosy. Yep, the disease mentioned in the Bible, and India, Vietnam, and Pakistan conquered trachoma, the leading infectious cause of infectious bronchitis. Brazil and Timor-Leste defeated elephantiasiasis which is this awful tropical disease that causes a swelling of the limbs and each of these victories freed the hundreds of thousands of families from diseases that have haunted humanity since ancient times but i think the big one which you played in that clip there was that in the fight against malaria two nations made history egypt home to 100 million peoplede, the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to eliminate the disease in 50 years. Egypt has had malaria, I think, for at least

8,000 years. They found evidence of it in the mummy of Tutankhamen. So the fact that we have now eliminated that after 8,000 years is actually extraordinary. And even more significantly, 17 African nations launched their first malaria vaccine programs in 2024, including Nigeria, which has the world's heaviest burden. And in December 2024, the World Health Organization reported that global malaria deaths are finally falling again after the setbacks of the pandemic. We've got another story that you're highlighting. I just want to run through a couple here. This is Austria's environment and climate minister. Have a listen to this one. I know I will face opposition in Austria on this, but I'm convinced that this is the time to adopt this law.

What law is she talking about? Well, 2024 marked this really dramatic turning point in Europe's approach to nature and restoration. really dramatic turning point in Europe's approach to nature and restoration. And as you heard there in June, after months of fierce opposition and political drama, that Austrian minister defied her own government and helped the EU to pass a new law requiring the restoration of 20% of EU lands and seas by 2030. This represents the most ambitious ecosystem restoration law ever passed by a major economy, and it signals a historic turning point. It's the moment when Europe decided to repair, not just to preserve, its natural world. So, I'm curious, when you talk about, you know, we need to focus on these stories of progress, who is not doing the focusing?

Because we've heard media reports here, so certainly the media, you know, are doing these stories to some extent. I think that is true. But what often happens is they kind of get lost in just the blizzard of death, disaster and division, which really constitutes the majority of what makes up the news. So, for example, the story of Egypt eliminating malaria, I think that appeared in the BBC and Al Jazeera. It certainly didn't make headlines in any Canadian newspapers or the New York Times. And if it does make it into a newspaper, it appears very far down below the line or in sort of the back pages. It doesn't make headline news. And I think the other reason for it is that those stories don't stick.

news. And I think the other reason for it is that those stories don't stick. We all remember the stories about someone crashing a vehicle into an innocent crowd of pedestrians. But the story of a country eliminating a horrible tropical disease doesn't have the same kind of resonance in our minds, for a very good reason, which is that we're all descended from a long line of scaredy cats. So all of the people who remembered the good news stories and didn't pay attention to the bad news ones didn't pass on their genes. So who's responsible then if it's important for us to remember these stories of progress and to focus on them as much as we are interested in looking at the bad news? Does the media need to train the audience or does the audience just need to be interested in following these stories more? As always with these things, it's usually a combination of both. I think a lot of people like to blame the news for not reporting more stories

of progress, but I think the blame is equally to lie with us as the audience. We have trained media organizations to report good news, to have trained media organizations to report bad news because those are the headlines that we click on. And so when we're scrolling through our feeds or we're discussing the news of the day, by concentrating on the stories of destruction and division, we signal to media organizations that we want more of that. And so I think there is an equal responsibility

between both the suppliers and the consumers of that news to try and change the narrative. And that doesn't necessarily mean, you know, singing kumbaya and holding hands and saying, let's just only talk about the good things that are happening, but at least some kind of balance. And I think right now the balance of bad news to good news, or sorry, bad news to stories of progress, is something like a thousand to one.

It's just overwhelming. I mean, part of the responsibility of the media, I would think, is to place good news stories in the context, or stories of progress, rather, in the context of what's happening globally and the trends that we are seeing. For instance, the UN says the number of displaced people has increased every year for 12 years. We know violence against women is still on the rise in a number of countries. We see extreme poverty. I know the UN has said that bringing extreme poverty down has been at a near standstill in the last decade. I mean, there are these sort of bigger stories that persist that

are still important to tell, I would argue. I would argue the same, but I also think that they should be placed in context. Let me give you an example. It's a story of what happened in the Amazon forest in 2024, which matters a lot more for the future of humanity than anything Elon Musk does with his rockets. And if you saw anything about the Amazon in 2024, it was probably about the region's record-breaking drought, which turned mighty rivers to trickles and saw the worst fires in almost two decades. But amidst that crisis, something remarkable also happened, which is that deforestation plummeted by 30% from the previous year, dropping to its lowest level in nine years. And under Lula, rates of deforestation in the Amazon have now fallen by

more than half in the last two years. And if those trends continue, we're going to see the lowest level of deforestation ever recorded in that region in 2025. And that matters enormously. recorded in that region in 2025. And that matters enormously. So while climate change poses growing threats to this vital ecosystem, 2024 proved that strong leadership and governments can still turn the tide. And I think few environmental victories in 2024 mattered more for the planet's future. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs.

And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. I just want to change gears because one of the things you have said is that Generation Z is not doomed. Tell us why that merits a separate story on your list. Well, I think it's been a really popular narrative in the past, not just 12 months, but it's been a popular narrative for a number of years now, this idea that Gen Z is doomed to anxiety and poverty. The reality is actually far more hopeful.

First of all, for a start, when you're talking about Gen Z, we are talking about the world. And in emerging economies, where four-fifths of young people in the world live, that generation is dramatically better off than their parents, Healthier, more educated, more connected. And in rich countries as well, Gen Z is kind of defying the doom. Their wages are actually rising faster than older workers. Youth unemployment is at record lows, and they're pursuing new kinds of skills. And 2024, I think, also marked a turning point in addressing some of their biggest challenges, because 19 US states restricted phones in schools. And here in Australia, we became the first country to ban social media for under-16s. And France announced that starting on the 1st of January this year,

there's going to be a nationwide school phone ban. So after years of hand-wringing about smartphones and mental health, it looks like we're finally starting to see real action to protect young people's well-being. You are interested in progress, and yet I know you felt particularly rattled after the U.S. election and wrote about it and said that you were shaken. Tell me a little bit about what you wrote and why you wanted to address it in that way. I was shaken. it in that way? I was shaken. I think I just was not expecting, I was not expecting that to happen when the country had had so many years to take the full measure of Donald Trump and to still vote someone with that kind of character into power. It came as a shock to me. But I think what it also reminded me was that good news doesn't just happen automatically and the moral arc doesn't just bend naturally towards progress it actually takes good people to fight for years sometimes decades to turn those kinds of stories around and uh it was

a reminder maybe that the bedtime stories aren't true that you know the good guys don't always win and that uh you know the bullies don't always win and that uh you know the bullies don't always get their comeuppance but i think have now that the dust has settled uh it's a reminder that stories of progress happen in many different places in a lot of different ways uh and it was a reminder to to try and look beyond the headlines for those kinds of stories over the next four years i think they are going to be many. I should point out, though, I mean, it was a democratic election and the majority of those thought this was a story of progress.

I mean, if not everyone subscribes to your same way of thinking, too. Absolutely. And I think that comes down to your definition of progress. My political leanings are probably, I describe myself as a liberal, and that's because I believe that the world is fundamentally unfair. I think that disadvantaged groups should have more advantage than they're given. But I also think that if you're looking at the biggest story of progress, there are some things that we can agree on. And I think everybody can agree that less deforestation is progress and that disease has been eliminated as progress and that people

becoming healthier and wealthier is progress as well. And rights being extended to all groups constitutes progress. And if we disagree about that definition, then it is very difficult to have a conversation where we head in the same direction. What do you hope for the media? I mean, if you feel as though there's this wide disparity of stories of progress versus just bad news, which direction would you like to see the media go and how might it achieve that? I think I'd love to just see more professional reporting

on what's going right. I think that those stories can be incredibly compelling. There are some incredibly compelling stories about what's going right with climate, about what's going right with school feeding programs around the world. There were some really amazing human rights victories in 2024. And so while the headlines focused on conflict and catastrophe, all of these remarkable things happened in the background. Solar energy reaching unprecedented scale, a year when half a billion children received school meals and breakthrough treatments gave new hope to HIV patients.

And I just wonder whether great narrative, excellent journalism and compelling stories, whether those skills could be applied to those kinds of stories, I think there's a market for it. Tell me a little bit more about the things you just mentioned, the efforts we saw in climate change and human rights. Yes, so climate change is a, this is a really interesting one, where you really have to be able to hold two ideas in your head at once,

that we are not moving fast enough. And yet we are also moving faster than anyone predicted even a few years ago. So 2024 obviously brought sobering reminders of how quickly temperatures are rising and increasing numbers of disasters. But it also showed that we're accelerating solutions faster than anyone predicted. Global solar installations reached an astounding 660 gigawatts in 2024. That's up from 50% from last year. The pace is staggering now. So what once took a month now happens in just 12 hours.

Solar has become not only the cheapest form of new electricity in history, the fastest growing energy technology ever deployed. And 2024 might also be remembered as the year that the energy transition hit the tipping point in China because it's the world's largest energy consumer, and it reached its wind and solar targets six years early, and electric vehicles have now captured more than half the car market, which is a decade ahead of schedule. Those implications are seismic. For the first time, China's oil demand looks like it might be falling now, which forced OPEC to slash its forecasts, I think something like five times this year. So the chickens really are finally coming home to roost.

The clean energy revolution is happening faster than even its biggest advocates predicted. How did you get into this line of thinking, this line of work? I mean, is it because you were feeling not hopeful? I mean, does this bring you hope doing this? Does this bring you hope doing this? Well, as a lot of people end up doing, this is my own form of medicine. I'm a recovering news junkie. I have been a voracious consumer of news, I think, for as long as I can remember,

certainly all the way through high school and into higher education and up until I was about 30 years old. But what reading that news did, it just made me incredibly despondent about what was happening in the world. And then about a decade ago, I read Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature, and it was like a light bulb going off. And I remember thinking to myself, well, if that's what the data is saying, then there must be news stories reporting this stuff out there. And as soon as I started to look, I started finding thousands of them. And really, so the last decade has been about improving that practice, getting better at finding those stories. And 2024, we found not just some of the stories that I mentioned to you here, but

hundreds, thousands of stories from all over the world about progress in various different areas. So this continues to be my medicine, and it's given me a much more nuanced view on what's happening in the world. I don't believe we're doomed. I certainly don't believe everything's going to turn out all right. But I feel like something in between, which feels like a much more realistic prognosis

than the views that I used to have. And just, I mean, aside from Fix the News, your website, where do you turn for these stories then, if they do exist out there? Well, as a well-trained elder millennial someone who's been reading the internet um for as long as i can remember now um i think what what i've done is over the course of the last 10 years i've discovered some interesting places on the internet where i can find this kind of news. What's really important is to always have it validated. Obviously, in an age where it's difficult to trust what you read online,

it's very important that the sources are valid, that they're correct. So we do a lot of work. A lot of work goes into that between myself and my team. But really, more and more, a lot of that reporting comes from non-English-speaking media, and that's where we're getting a lot of that good news from. So it's a practice that we've developed over the course of a decade. Okay, we hope you keep doing it.

Angus Hervey, thank you so much for talking to us this morning. Thanks very much for having me. Angus Hervey is the editor of Fix the News, a website and newsletter that report on stories of progress. He's also a co-host of their podcast called Hope is a Verb. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.