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News media can present news about the coronavirus pandemic responsibly, without a constant drumbeat of doom even when it’s not called for. That doesn’t always happen.

I call your attention to the editorial cartoon at right. Its author may seek to totally discount the integrity of news coverage on the pandemic, which wouldn’t be fair either, but its message urges us to pay appropriate attention to the good news along the way.

That includes important news that often gets buried under the old observation that “if it bleeds, it leads.” Cartoonist Darrin Bell shows a little-acknowledged story from last April that he thinks might seem like a much bigger deal 1,000 years from now, sacrificed to the sometimes-over-hyped panic induced by the biggest bad news story of this century so far.

There’s no doubt the pandemic has been an inconceivably huge tragedy, and it’s not over yet. But it’s also true that a relentless focus on the horrific nature of it, to the near exclusion of the good news around us, leads society into a darker place than it needs to be. And if we’ve learned anything during this time, it’s that small degrees of emphasis spread over a long time or a large number of people can lead us in directions not intended or even imagined.

As the poet John Milton observed in the 1600s, the mind can “make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.”

In this new year, know that, although there is much news in the world that is dire, there is also much that is beautiful all around. Hold on to every such expression of heaven you find.

Scott Hunter

editor and publisher