Politico Magazine recently turned to some of the nation’s leading thinkers for a massive series called “How to Fix Politics.”

I’d encourage you to check out the whole thing here: https://tinyurl.com/y2wna2am.

But I was particularly drawn to a section about how to fix misinformation.

It’s maybe a personal bias because of my line of work, but I tend to think misinformation is one of the biggest dangers to our republic. It’s hard to even debate the issues of the day, let alone try to solve them, when people vote and argue and even legislate based on feelings and theories instead of facts.

The Politico writers offer several interesting ideas, though not all of them are, in my mind, the right approach. Or even plausible.

Former U.S. Sen. Al Franken, for example, suggests the Federal Communications Commission fine people for lying on broadcast or cable radio or TV or the Internet. That’s not only a gross violation of the First Amendment, but also dangerous. A lie connotes an intent to deceive, and it can be especially hard to tell whether someone was being intentionally dishonest or simply misstated a fact, misremembered a fact, or tried to tell a joke.

I don’t want anyone in my government given the power to determine whether Stephen Colbert is engaged in satire or subterfuge.

But I wanted to talk specifically about one idea for fixing misinformation.

In a short essay titled “Correct for the media’s negativity bias,” Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker argues news reporters should “look to their colleagues in sports, business and weather, and present regular statistics on the state of the nation and world, not just men biting dogs.” He calls it “not ‘optimism’ so much as ‘factfulness.'”

He argues some good points. There’s an old saying in journalism, “one, two, trend,” meaning journalists tend to look at a short sample of data or anecdotes and write pieces that try to extrapolate that scientifically meaningless evidence into proof some big change is afoot. If there are back-to-back car crashes at a particular intersection, for example, journalists sometimes start writing stories about how dangerous that intersection is without looking at long-term data to see whether those two crashes were flukes.

Pinker says we ought to stop that kind of stuff, and he’s right.

But I question his overall premise, that, if the media reports what’s working in public policy with as much vigor as it does what’s not working, it might encourage civic activism.

For one thing, it’s not our job to tout governments’ accomplishments. Newspapers exist and are protected in the First Amendment to tell the public what the government doesn’t want them to know. Especially in the era of fewer reporters and every government agency with its own Twitter handle, the government can publicly pat its own back and reporters’ time is better spent uncovering the closet skeletons from city halls to the White House.

That’s not to say we can’t or shouldn’t write good news. I’m proud to work for a local daily that still runs cheerful features on its readers.

But, if I’m forced to choose between a story about a mayor who launches a new economic development project or a mayor who’s skimming the public coffers, I’ll spend my time and resources on the latter.

Secondly, I reject the idea that optimistic “factfulness” is all that encourages involvement.

When The News wrote recently about a broken-down veterans van, the community came through with more than enough money. And there aren’t two dozen Democrats running for the White House because of President Donald Trump’s accomplishments. They’re running because of his shortcomings and because they think they can do a better job.

Newspapers write about what’s broken not because we’re morbid, but so our readers can know what needs to be fixed.

And, time and time again, readers step up to do so.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, readers simply don’t read positive news.

In Lansing, where we kept constant watch on the reader traffic on every story, crashes, crimes, and scandals were always at the top of the board. Rare was the day a positive piece won the traffic race. On a slow news day, Michigan State University football or basketball topped the charts.

Readers may say in focus groups they want positive news or on Facebook that they’ve given up reading the news because it’s too depressing, but the data says otherwise. The data says readers want to know what’s broken, and that’s what newspapers give them.

I’d like to think that’s true not because the populace is prone to pessimism, but that, like journalists, readers want to know what’s broken so they know what to fix.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-358-5686 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.