Probably many of us have thought more than once that we should stop reading newspapers and watching the news, overwhelmed by the feeling that in them we find nothing but bad news. Approaching the daily press in the morning requires courage: the accounts of tragedies and conflicts far surpasses the occasional comforting report about a new medical discovery or the signing of a peace agreement between opposing sides. Terrorism, crime, corruption, poverty, injustice, destruction of the environment, acts of racism, discrimination against women, xenophobia and other hundred calamities dominate the news, to the point that it may seem that this continuous cascade of misfortunes is all that happens in the world: that there is nothing else.
And, nevertheless, there is more: much more. In fact, no newspaper or digital platform would have the capacity to report everything that is going well in the world if it attempted to do so. The truth is that what is inhumane makes the news because what’s humane has become the norm.
Let’s imagine a newspaper of the Stone Age. In that bloody time, the hypothetical troglodyte journalist in search of a scoop (of a story that could shock his hypothetical readers) would write on the front page, with big block letters, things like: «For three days there have been no hostilities between the clan del valley and the clan of the forest»; «Rumor has it that in the caves of the South there is a chief who does not beat his women»; «Witnesses say that yesterday the leader of the X tribe and his men crossed paths with a member of the tribe Y and did not stone him to death.» The shocking, the unusual, what would have sold newspapers 15,000 years ago (if 15,000 years ago there had been newspapers) would have been the reports about the exceptional harmony between enemies or the very rare act of clemency of those who did not use violence when they could have done so.
Today violence makes the news because in most of the planet we have managed to live—almost always—in peace.
The wonder that no newspaper bothers to publish, because we take it for granted, is that 7.7 billion human beings live in this world, every day, in relative harmony. The peaceful coexistence that prevails in thousands of cities where people of different beliefs, races and cultures share the space, go to work, study, have fun and dream, without thinking about resorting to violence to achieve their goals, is an extraordinary achievement, unthinkable a few millennia ago. We should be proud of it. Today, the willingness of most people to cooperate with other human beings, weaving with them spaces of peaceful coexistence, far exceeds the recourse to war, arms and confrontation. That is why, we insist, violence makes the news instead of tolerance, respect and cooperation. Without denying, of course, that the tolerance, respect and cooperation that we practice are still imperfect, fragile and in need of much improvement.
The challenge that our time poses to us is clear: we need to continue working so that violence becomes increasingly exceptional. And we can do so with the conviction that we can eradicate it: the progress achieved already sustains this belief.
When the newspapers threaten to depress us, it is good to remember once again that today, unlike what happened in the past, the inhumane is news because the humane has become the norm.
