Viewers of evening news broadcasts have had it with the avalanche of bad ides lately, and they’ve spoken. When anchor Brian Williams challenged the audience to suggest good news to report recently, emails flooded the network’s servers.

“We have more stories than we could humanly cover if we combined all three network newscasts. It’s hit an unbelievable nerve,” said Williams.

I applaud the viewers initiative. And kudos for their patience, because I walked away years ago.

Fifteen years ago, I stopped watching the news. Not because I cared less about the world. I stopped watching because it was clear the stations recycled the same report every night.

A fire. A shooting. An intolerable act of cruelty. An inaccurate weather forecast. A thirty-second human interest story that rarely counterbalanced the evilness that was mankind. Day after day, it was the same thing. Only the names of the newscasters changed.

So for my own mental health, I quit the nightly news. The Internet, health magazines, and financial newspapers ( from page three on ) took up the slack. And I paid more attention my friends, family and coworkers. Even strangers. Wherever I went, I seemed to notice more about human interaction. Because of this shift of focus, some profound changes happened.

I witnessed intrinsic good of people–gestures of kindness that people did for each other, without thought of reward or recognition. Over time the frequency of these acts seemed to increase. Now I notice them constantly.

After years of observation, I feel the ratio of decent humans to douchebags is roughly 10 to 1. For every Bernie Madoff, far more people who run their lives without resorting to tom-fuckery and shell-games.

So if 90 percent of people are basically good, maybe it’s time the news could reflect that.

And then I’ll start watching it again.