A New Narrative for Development: World’s Best News

Decades of negative communication about hunger and hopelessness in developing countries has resulted in a general public attitude that the fight against poverty does not work. We need a new narrative about global development: Nuanced and current knowledge creates hope – and hope creates motivation for action.

World’s Best News is an example of a unique partnership that brings together the UN and more than 100 NGOs and 100 private companies. Since 2010, the independent media platform World’s Best News has published news about progress and solutions to the world’s challenges to the Danish population. All uniting to spread news about progress on a variety of different platforms using the Sustainable Development Goals as the frame and constructive journalism as method. The aim is to connect civil society, business, and the citizens in the pursuit of a more informed and sustainable world.

A collaboration with DSB, the Danish Railways, made it possible to decorate and InterCity train with World’s Best News messages.

Today, World’s Best News is now an international network with sister organizations in Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Finland.

It is deeply ingrained in ‘classical’ journalism to focus on conflicts and problems in society. However, while being critical is essential to all objective reporting, the focus on conflicts often gets out of hand in the mainstream media. Instead, World’s Best News focus on progress, possibilities and solutions to the big challenges facing the world today.

“World’s Best News has shown that it is possible to change the world. You are creators of hope and perspective.”
Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen, Member of Danish Parliament.

“The collaboration with World’s Best News has made us reconsider our coverage of global issues. When you started with constructive journalism it influenced the rest of the content in our newspaper”
Jonas Ratje, Editor in Chief, Metroxpress.

Meet people with constructive and unexpected development news. That is the core objective of World’s Best News.
Credit: Louise Dyring Mbae

How and why this action impacts the people in the community ?
When more people know about the solutions to the world’s problems, they are more motivated to ensure these solutions will be implemented and put into action. When World’s Best News launched in 2010, 16% of the Danes believed there was progress in lifting people out of poverty; in 2016 this number increased to 32%.

We invite you to follow this special blog series on the High Level Political Forum 2017 “Eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity in a changing world” to find out more about the action taken by citizens and organizations of the country presenting their Voluntary National Review on the SDGs