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Source: Ashoka Turkey

Ashoka Fellow David Bornstein's #BriefButSpectacular Take on Telling the Whole Story

This article originally appeared on PBS Newshour

In PBS Newshour's #BriefButSpectacular online video series, Ashoka Fellow and Journalist David Bornstein argues that creating journalism that integrates reports of the realities behind the challenges we face with coverage of the inspiring solutions to them allows for Journalism to become a more powerful and equitable force than just doing one or the other.

"The main way that the news harms democracy is by providing a view of the world that is largely deficit framed. I mean we are amply informed about what's going wrong, about what's ugly, about what's corrupt. But because we don't have a similar amount of information about what's growing, what are the new possibilities emerging, we have a very flawed kind of one-sided view.

"Particularly when it comes to communities that have experienced poverty or marginalization historically, or communities of color in the United States especially, you have narratives that have been deficit framed for as long as we've had journalism... you take a community of color and you type in the search and you'll find in many cases that the majority of stories are about violence, as if to say that is the majority of activity in that community... it's not the only truth. We should tell the whole story. If we dont... we are creating bias in the minds of people who often have power over those communities."

David argues that journalism has the opportunity to "catch the world doing the right thing and let that also spread."

"I think journalism at its best should activate people to be powerful players in a participatory democracy."

Click below to learn more about David and his #BriefButSpectacular take on Solutions-based Journalism

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Ashoka insight

Ashoka believes in the power of big ideas to create more capacity for people to make changes to problems they are facing, which is a way to create deeper equity and opportunity within communities, cultures, regions, and the world at large.

David's continued innovations in Solutions Journalism (to better balance and integrate the in depth reporting of the challenges we face with inspiring and important examples of how these challenges are being addressed) contributes to a world where communities can be a place where many people can feel more that they can give to the good of the world.