Is it Just Fluff? Topics, News Values, and Normative Democratic Implications of BBC’s The Happy Pod

A growing number of legacy news organizations are experimenting with ways to address the widespread perception that news is too negative. While many of these initiatives claim to apply traditional news values with a solutions-oriented twist, this study explores one that makes no such claims: the BBC’s The Happy Pod. Using a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of one year of Happy Pod episodes, we analyze the topics and news values the podcast applies and discuss normative democratic implications of this happy-news-only initiative. We find that it is almost the inverse of a traditional news program, covering primarily soft news stories and applying few traditional hard news values (suggesting that some traditional news topics and values are more straightforwardly compatible with happy news). Instead, it applies a host of humanistic news values often downplayed in mainstream news. We conclude that, as a sole source of information, The Happy Pod falls short of democratic ideals, but in other ways, particularly in taking seriously the affective aspects of the news experience and including common citizens, it surpasses most traditional news sources.