Positively Ernie

By Ernie Anastos
FOX 5 Anchor

As someone who has been an experienced anchor in New York for so many years, I hear from people, “Everything just seems so bad, can you find something positive to tell us about, Ernie?” My new program, Positively Ernie, is designed to focus on the good things that are happening in our world. There are two segments, one is called positive impact, and it has to do with people who are doing good things either in charity or in an organization and finding a way to reach out to people. I also do something on positive lifestyle; I think everyone is concerned with how we live today. It’s about how we can live better physically, emotionally and spiritually. We feature Dr. Oz, who is a medical guru and he is on every show. He talks about goals in health and medicine. It’s about learning, where people can say “I like that,” and use it to empower their lives and also share it with others.

We also do something about positive influence; it’s the power of the media plus education and it gives people the opportunity to learn. I am trying to launch a campaign for more positive news on the air, I am calling on many of my colleagues in the industry who know how difficult it is to cover news because it’s an explosive world and we have so many elements we didn’t have before like cable, and now we have an excess of information that comes to us and we have to wave through all of this information and choose what to put on the air.

I think that what we need to do is all work together so we can have more positive stories on the news so we can all learn and grow from that. I watched a story on the news recently, which says that viewership on the networks in many homes, is dropping and many people who I talk to on the street tell me that they get frightened when they put the news on. We need the balance; we have to report the stories that are going on but, at the same time, we can be responsible, particularly to our young viewers and put more stories on the air that are positive and that is one of the reasons I am doing the show. The world is a lot better than we think. •