From a certain point of view

 Sometimes it takes me a long time to put together a thought in my head to the point where I can express it coherently to others. This one has taken me most of my career to figure out, but it all finally clicked into place a little while ago.

 For as long as I've worked in news there's always been a response I haven't quite been able to articulate to the sentiment I often heard from others about how depressing the news always is. How all it is is one bad event after another, strung out over 60 minutes of television. While in most cases and on many days I can certainly agree with the reasoning behind such thoughts I always knew that that wasn't really true. That yes, a lot of bad happens and we report on a lot of it, but I never felt the same sense of doom from the news as so many others seemed to.
I was never able to articulate my feelings about it though so for years I let it go, even as something in the back of my head couldn't totally agree with it.

 That was until recently. I was having a conversation about this subject and was again about to find myself agreeing that yes, the news is indeed largely negative when I had the epiphany it seems I'd been waiting to have for a long time.

 There is just as much, if not more, optimism and inspiration to be found on the evening news than there ever is despair and sorrow. It all comes down to how you choose to look at things and how wide a focus you view what you're seeing.

Here's what I mean.

 For every tragedy you see splashed across the screen there are just as many acts of heroism, bravery and compassion, if not more. While you may see a horrible auto accident with one person gravely injured there are several paramedics trying to save that life. For every shooting there are dozen of police officers who have dedicated their lives to protecting the public as best they can. For every missing person there may be dozens or hundreds of people willing to take time to help in the search. I could go on and on.

 Yes, there is a lot of bad in this world and a lot of it gets reported, but when you look at those reports, within every single one you will find people who are doing whatever is in their capacity to help in whatever way they can.

 Compassion, kindness and love are the human defaults, that's why to such a large degree they've become simply part of the background we don't even see anymore. People doing bad things are still such an exception to that default that that is why it makes the news.

 So while we may talk about the depressing stuff primarily on the news, I suggest you try looking at the pictures from a different point of view. Look for the good being done and I guarantee, you'll find many more things to be optimistic about, rather than dismayed.