From immigration to air pollution, the news agenda tends to focus on dramatic events and problems and often leaves out the examples when things are working well. It can leave us with the impression that issues are rarely solvable. So is there an alternative? Stories that engage with the possibility that positive change is possible.
Embracing the principles of what is known as ‘solution-focussed journalism’, World Hacks is a new weekly programme for BBC World Service which takes on the big and small problems of our time and looks at how they can be solved. An international team of journalists will find the solutions being tried out in the real word and ask whether these approaches – some of which challenge the established consensus – could be successfully adopted more often.
The programme covers stories about an innovative way of making water in Peru, a new system for delivering aid in Lebanon and a new police training system that could prevent innocent people being shot. Unafraid to probe, our team of reporters will hold these projects up to rigorous scrutiny and look at the evidence which suggests they might actually work.
In addition World Hacks features mini ‘talks’ from radical thinkers. The programme will also play agony aunt for the everyday problems of our listeners across the world, inviting them to share what makes their life hard – whether it is their finances, their relationships or their noisy neighbours – and finding the right hacks for them.
Presented by an international team of journalists, unafraid to probe, but also sharing the human and even the humorous in the stories they tell.