Good news in a bad news year
Many readers will think the best thing about 2020 is that it’s nearly over. There’s no doubt that 2020 has been a year with challenges unlike others in recent memory, dominated by a pandemic that the United Nations said in March would be the world’s worst crisis since World War II.
A theme quickly took hold. Even Time magazine called 2020 ‘‘the worst year ever’’, although that was qualified as the worst since 1919, 1929 or 1945.
History is long, but memories are short. Years like 1348 and 1492 weren’t great either.
It’s possible to balance the prevailing ‘‘worst year ever’’ narrative with positive news. After a steady diet of bad news about election shenanigans and Covid-19, the New York Times’ excellent podcast, The Daily, offered preChristmas brightness with ‘‘The Year in Good News’’. The podcast asked listeners to write in with their own good news stories, which ranged from people landing dream jobs to overcoming health problems to starting relationships.
The editor of the Guardian’s Upside news feed admitted ‘‘it’s been hard to remain optimistic’’, but he found positivity despite the UK’s Covid catastrophes and Brexit chaos.
The Upside review of 2020 included the news that MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, donated US$6 billion (NZ$8.4b) to aid organisations and charities this year. The Upside was also impressed that New Zealand sourced Covid vaccines for our Pacific neighbours.
At the Future Crunch website, where science communicators share stories of human progress, New Zealand appeared twice on a list of ‘‘99 good news stories of 2020 you probably didn’t hear about’’. Of course, we heard about them. There was New Zealand providing free sanitary products in schools and there was Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in a select group that showed democracies led by women did better with the pandemic than countries led by men. Others were Taiwan, Germany, Denmark and Finland.
But you may not have heard about the other stories. The site’s editors struggled to find any media that reported US Justice Department data showing violent crime in the US decreased for the third consecutive year and property crime for the 17th consecutive year.
Other examples of good news include the fact electronic waste generated by Americans has been declining since 2015, forests in the UK have grown back to medieval levels and global rates of the mosquito-borne disease lymphatic filariasis have dropped from 199 million cases 20 years ago to 51m.
Closer to home, our success with Covid-19 had an unexpected side-effect. Stuff reported in August that New Zealand is one of the few countries where the pandemic actually caused a reduction in deaths. At July 20, we had our lowest death rate since 2016.
That seems counter-intuitive, but the lockdown stopped other viruses circulating. Fewer fatal road crashes, less air pollution and reduced elective surgeries may also have played a part.
The survival of a threatened media industry was another good news story. Metro, North and South and the Listener magazines were resurrected after the shock collapse of Bauer, and new titles emerged.
Increased awareness of the shameful side of New Zealand history was another good news story, whether it was the growing use of te reo Ma¯ori by Pa¯keha¯, the Ihuma¯tao settlement, the Stuff apology to Ma¯ori or even Canterbury’s historic Governors Bay Hotel changing its name to remove its associations with Governor George Grey.
It was a year of progress.