Good News

I would like to briefly speak with you about news. Because that’s what Ode Magazine is about. And that’s where we present a different perspective.

We are made to believe that news is whatever is presented to us on the daily front pages and what makes the headlines on television. Media pride themselves about their objectivity. But one can hardly argue that the media present us with an objective picture of whatever goes on in our world. We only learn about the mistakes and the problems. About fraud and violence. We only learn about whatever goes wrong. And then we are supposed to believe that that is our reality.

Of course it is not. On every day in most lives, more goes right than wrong. There are 53 countries on the African continent. Only 6 regularly make the news. The reports about these 6 countries that face enormous challenges, completely distort the public perception of the complete continent. We tend to believe that Africa is a place of continuous disaster. In reality the per capita income of the vast majority of African countries is much higher than the per capita income of the new economic superpower: India.

We don’t know that because we read the papers and we watch television. I think that is wrong and at Ode we want to change that. We believe that media have the obligation to report what happens in the world, not just what goes wrong.

It is an unfortunate trend. Recently a research group analyzed the front pages of British newspapers during a two-week period. It was exactly the same kind of research that had been done 30 years ago. The research group was looking for the ratio between positive and negative stories on the front pages. In the Seventies – at the height of the cold war - there was one positive story against 3 negative stories. Thirty years later there was only one positive story against 17 negative stories.

If I look at these numbers, I think that I have been living on a different planet these past 3 decades. I have seen major progress. I have witnessed positive change. Despite the threat of terrorism, we live in a much more secure world than we did 30 years ago.

At Ode we always look for the possible. We are optimists. We have remained optimists. Because, don’t forget, that’s the way we all begin our lives. I have yet to meet a pessimistic baby.

We know that there are problems. Of course, we don’t close our eyes to misery. But we really differ in our mission: we want to help, we want to solve problems, meet challenges and that’s why we look for possible solutions. We believe in opportunities. In the creativity of humankind. In everyone’s longing to make a positive contribution.

It is a bit strange that our focus on the news is so unique. But let’s look closely at that word: news. It’s about the new. Do we really think that the next bomb explosion in Baghdad is news? Isn’t that just the next sad and very unfortunate event? There is hardly anything new about such an event.

Here’s some Ode news that you may look forward to in the coming months. We believe it is news when in the suburbs of Paris one man is turning immigrant troublemakers into successful entrepreneurs. We believe it is news when thousands of cotton farmers in India turn organic, providing themselves with a better income and making the planet healthier. We believe it is news when a Nigerian doctor is able to operate a full service, state of the art heart hospital in a third world country at 10 percent of the costs of such a hospital in the West.

These are the stories we are finding, because we are looking for them. Please join our search. We are sure you know many more promising examples of people and initiatives that are making the world a better place. Let’s celebrate them. Let’s sing praise to them. Let’s bring an ode to them.