The news you want

Yair Lapid says Israelis prefer negative news and should stop complaining about getting just that

Yair Lapid|Published: 10.06.08 , 01:22

Nine months ago, as you may know, I started hosting the Channel 2 Friday news program. In the first six months I also edited the show. One of my first decisions was to add a two-minute feature at the end of the program, right before the weather forecast. We called it “One Good Person.”

The idea was simple. Every week we dedicated two minutes to one person who does something good for his or her community: A lady who opened a club for children at risk; a military officer who insisted on employing mentally disabled youngsters; the father of a missing soldier who visits wounded Israelis; a woman who established an organization that sends people to hug abandoned babies at hospitals so they know what love feels like, despite all.

The critics were, as expected, cynical. They argued, justifiably perhaps, that this was not the role of a news show. On the other hand, those were merely two minutes at the end of a 90-minute program replete with the customary blood-sweat-and-tears that make up Israel’s reality. It came after all the stories about dead girls in suitcases, Qassam rockets, and government failures.

I was proud of this feature, and felt it responds to a real need. Every Israeli journalist is familiar with this. Three times a week, at the supermarket, at the video machine, and at the parking lot, somebody stops us and reprimands us for our well-known wickedness. “Why do you always have to show only the bad things?” they angrily ask.

Indeed, there is an exceptional number of wonderful people in this country. Israelis, as it turns out, are busy contributing to their communities to a much larger extent than we ever imagined. In every community in Israel there are good people who do good things. Moreover, they were always a little surprised when we approached them. All of them assumed that they are doing the right and natural thing, and couldn’t quite understand why we were interested in them.

War more interesting than peace

Two weeks ago, it turned out they were right, so we canceled this feature. I will explain it in the most technical and dry manner possible: At the end of every show I get the details of its rating. I tried to fight the data as much as I could, yet at the end of the day it overcame me. Because this feature did not interest you.

There was no technical issue here. This feature was produced with much love and talent, and we invested plenty of money in it (in fact, based on a per-minute calculation, “One Good Person” was the most expensive part of the program.) Yet the viewers left. Every week, when the feature came on, they switched to other channels and our rating dropped. Eventually we had no other choice and decided to forget about this feature. Sometimes one simply needs to admit to failure.

Am I even allowed to complain? I guess not. This is the nature of this profession, those are its rules, I love it, and I chose it too many years ago to be allowed to sink into self-righteous bitterness right about now. If the viewers do not wish to watch something, there is no need to force it on them. We are dealing with commercial television here, not a charity organization.

However, next time, before you go ahead and complain about the media, remember that there is a worst possibility than the claim that it does not give you what you want – that is, perhaps the media does give you what you want. War is more interesting than peace, murder is more interesting than good neighborly relationships, and many bad people are more interesting than one good person.