And in Other News..

We live in a scary time. Wildfires have destroyed hundreds of homes in California, a woman was killed after responding to a Craigslist post, and a house fire killed seven college students in North Carolina. These news items are constant reminders that you never know what tomorrow may bring - if it even comes at all.

It is tragic that these things happen and that we are being bombarded daily by reports of murder, child abuse, natural disasters and other sure fire signs that the world as we know it is going to hell.

It is in moments like this, when all the bad news of the day gets to be overwhelming, that we should stop to remember that there is still some good left. For an entire nation (Red Sox Nation, that is), the beloved hometown team winning the World Series for the second time in three years was a brief flicker of hope in an other bleak existence. Everyday, people are out and about performing good deeds, but we rarely ever hear about them. Don't we deserve a break from all the negativity that the media forces upon us?

I for one think that it would be beneficial to the public to receive positive news for once. I am in no way saying that we should ignore the violence, sex, drugs and all that entirely, but that we need to also see the lighter side of the news - the humanitarian causes, the "ugliest dog" pageants, the stuff that will remind people that life isn't just one experience of despair and suffering after another. What could it hurt, in an hour of news, to keep the negatives and positives equally displayed? Keep the rapes and murders in the first half and end on a happy note. Talk about the charities and the silly stuff, send people to sleep with a grin rather than a lingering sensation of doom and destruction.

Or better yet, give people a choice. Make two different types of news: the good news and the bad news. Let people change the channel once they've tired of hearing about the latest missing person cases, or the seemingly endless war in Iraq. We know that there is drama in the world, yes, and plenty of us have our own drama to deal with. Yes, we should stay informed that there are people suffering, but there are also people with stories of miracles, and hope that deserve to be heard as well. Give people hope that tomorrow can and will be better.

There are times when you want to turn on the TV and just relax. If you've had a stressful day at work, you don't want to come home to more sadness and despondency. Other than watching reruns of old sitcoms, you should be able to watch the news without feeling like "oh my God, not more of this". Wouldn't you like, for once, to turn on Fox 25 and laugh at what you see on the screen? Wouldn't that make your day just a little bit better after you got chewed out at work for being late coming back from lunch again? We live an America, a country that boasts equality, especially equality of opportunity. Shouldn't that same equality apply to the news?