Introducing Muhammad Lila, Founder of Goodable, an initiative focused on spreading kindness through ensuring good news coverage gets as much focus as bad news
What service are you offering in your community?
Goodable is the world’s first ever 24 hours a day, 7 days a week news network that only covers good news. That means no politics, no Trump, no death, mayhem and destruction. We deliver good news. We deliver real news that’s really good for you.
Our plan is to be able to create the CNN of good news. When you think of CNN, you think of news around the clock. You think of breaking news alerts on television that are sent to your phone. We’re doing the exact same thing, but we’re building something where good news is just as important as bad news.
It’s a paradigm shift because for decades it’s been ingrained in our minds that news is only news if it’s bad. And me as a journalist, and us as a team, we don’t understand why. We don’t understand why good news can’t be treated with the same urgency as bad news. And so when there’s a breaking news alert of a hurricane or an earthquake, that has to do with death and destruction, we consider that news. If you ask anybody, they would say, “hey, there was an earthquake in Haiti or somewhere in California, that’s news.” Well, why can’t it also be news when a young girl saves up enough money to pay for her grandmother’s cancer treatment? We think that’s good news, and that should qualify as news, just as much as anything else.
The prevailing wisdom for a long time was that bad news sells. There’s a saying: “If it bleeds, it leads.” When I was at CNN, I had access to the metrics that we have and I saw a pattern happen over and over again, that our most popular stories were never about bad things. This is totally counterintuitive. You would think that the most popular stories were about bad things happening. But that was never the case. And this happened over and over again. And the data was so compelling that younger viewers were desperate and hungry for an alternative to all the negative news that surrounded them. But an alternative didn’t exist yet. So they wanted good news more than they wanted bad news, and they were sharing good news much more, and they were commenting on good news much more, and they were taking actions on good news much more, but there was no platform that was built to cater towards them. And so I sat back and said, “well, why don’t we just build it?” And that’s what Goodable is.
What inspired you to offer this service?
I spent the last 10 years or so covering the world’s biggest problems. And when I say covering, I don’t mean sitting in a newsroom and talking to people on the phone. I mean getting on a plane and flying to war zone after war zone, after hurricane, after flood, after disaster, after you name it. And one day my team and I were held at gunpoint. It’s happened before and we have training for what to do, but the network killed the story even though we had footage of everything that happened. And I remember sitting on the flight so vividly on the way home, and I was so angry. And I just kept asking myself, why is it that they only send us to cover bad news?
I can measure my career in airport codes. I was averaging 100 flights a year. And I kept track of every airport that I ever flew into. And I went back and I counted each and every one, hundreds of them. And every time they sent me somewhere, it was because something bad happened. And I couldn’t understand why. It just stayed in my mind: why is it that they only send us to cover bad news? And it became this existential question that I just couldn’t figure out. I mean, I know a little bit about why they send people to cover bad news. But after looking into the numbers and realizing how much power there is in good news, I realized that there’s so much more potential in good news that hasn’t been achieved yet.
I spoke to people at the network about it. But the challenge when you’re dealing with big networks is that they know what they’re good at. And there are certain things that all of the traditional news networks are really good at. Fox knows what it’s good at. CNN knows what it’s good at. The moment you present something that’s outside of their comfort zone or something that’s new or something they don’t instinctively understand, it’s very difficult for big organizations to take risks like that. Because they know where their money comes from, and if you introduce something new, they don’t know that money is going to come from what you’re suggesting. And so they loved the idea, but about a week later, I got a call from someone very senior at CNN saying, “Muhammad, we love your idea, but we need you to keep covering war zones.”
Initially I was very disappointed, but you also reach a point in your life when you believe that you’re on to something. And I believe with my heart that the world needs good news. Even before coronavirus, the world needed good news. And with coronavirus, that’s just gone up exponentially. And there’s so much room to build a platform right now that gives people something that we all want. And I don’t need CNN for that. The market has changed so much right now. And our numbers at Goodable back it up. We’ve been able to reach millions and millions of people in a way that we don’t need the big networks of the world for distribution, because all the tools for distribution are free and they’re at our disposal.
How do you believe this particular service can help people? What are the benefits?
I get direct messages almost every day from people around the world who say they’ve stopped watching the news, they’ve stopped consuming traditional media, and the only ones they come to for news, are us. Goodable is their only source for news.
As a journalist, it’s the most rewarding feeling in the world to know that you’re making a direct impact on people’s lives. For example, if you look at the market size, every year Reuters does a survey of news consumption patterns. They survey tens of thousands of people, and not just in the US but I think they do it in the UK, I think in Canada too, and a bunch of other countries. And last year, there was a statistic that really stood out to me: 40 % of Americans say that they actively avoid watching the news. And the number is the same in the UK. And the number one reason why is because it puts them in a bad mood. Nobody said they stop watching the news because they think it’s fake or because they don’t like Trump or they don’t like the politics. The number one reason that they’ve stopped is that news puts them in a bad mood. So if you work out those numbers, 40% say they avoid watching the news, half of those, so 20% of people, say they stop watching because the news puts them in a bad mood. 20% of an entire population is a massive number. That’s like saying 20% of Canada won’t watch the news because it makes them feel sad. That’s insane! And all of those people are looking for an alternative because they still want to consume the news, it’s just that they don’t want to feel miserable every time they turn on the television.
And so to get that response from our viewers and our readers, is the best feeling in the world! We’ve had messages from people saying they were at such a low point in their lives, and we were able to bring stories to them that made them feel better about the world and their place in it. And that’s a dream come true for us.
Also, when you really think about goodness, it doesn’t have a religion or a colour or geography. Goodness happens everywhere. And so we said, if we want to be true to our values, we have to recognize goodness everywhere, even in places that might not make people happy. Certain countries or places are controversial or they have a negative reputation, but that doesn’t mean good things don’t happen in those places. It doesn’t mean that there are no good people there. And so if somebody sends us something good happening, for example in North Korea, outside of the politics and all of that, we think goodness can happen anywhere. And we think it’s our job to showcase some of that. And it’s also a way of humanizing people that would otherwise not be humanized. For example, some of our best stories have to do with refugees and immigrants. And there are parts of the world right now where’s there’s a lot of hatred and animosity towards refugees and immigrants. But does that mean we shouldn’t showcase their goodness? Absolutely not. If anything, it means we should showcase their goodness even more. What got you into this activity? Why are you passionate about it?
I was always a storyteller. Growing up, I knew that that’s what I loved. I remember when I was in grade 7, I was supposed to do an assignment in my science class, a diagram of amoebas. And instead of doing the assignment, I wrote a story and handed it in. And at the end of the class that day, the teacher handed out everybody’s assignments and announced to the class: “There’s one student who didn’t do the assignment that he was supposed to.” And I was so embarrassed because I knew it was me. And so he gathered everybody around, and he said, “I want everybody to know who that student was.” And I thought, this is going to be the most embarrassing thing in the world. So he said, “That person was Muhammad. And Muhammad decided to write a story.” And there were smirks or whatever. And he asked me to read the story out to the class. I think it was 2 or 3 pages. It was about a friend of mine who developed superpowers, like most kids in grade 7 would write about, and he used his superpowers to help people recycle. Afterwards, the teacher told the class, “In Science, we need more people like this who can take environmentalism and topics around science and make them accessible and understandable to other people.”
And so I knew from an early age that storytelling was my strength. I always thought that I would be doing documentaries. I never thought that I would wind up as a correspondent, first at the CBC and then going to ABC and CNN, flying around the world. I never thought I would have that opportunity, and I’m humbled for every step that I’ve taken.
There’s an important point here about Goodable. There’s a lot of people online who just do feel good videos, so cute cat videos or other animal videos. There’s a whole industry around that. One of the things that we’re very careful about is that we do real news that’s real journalism. So we try as much as we can to avoid things like cat videos. We know they’ll get really good views, but we don’t always consider that news. So we look for news that’s good around the world that is authentic, that we can verify, that we have consent to share, and we just apply the same journalistic principles that CNN and ABC and CBC do to Goodable. That’s important to us because we want people to know that when good news happens, they can come to us and they can rely on what we’re telling them because it’s gone through our own vetting and our own editorial process. For us, the storytelling is an important process and we love it. It’s fun to be able to take storytelling and use it in a way that makes the world better.
Taking that first step to start something is a very emotional, draining experience because you’re taking the biggest risk of your life. Goodable has been by far the biggest risk of my life. And that sounds funny because I’ve covered war zones for a living, I’ve been shot at, I’ve been held at gunpoint, ISIS tried to kill me twice. The Taliban ambushed us when we were in the mountains of Afghanistan, Ukranian militias targeted me. I’ve been through things that most people can never imagine. But starting Goodable was the scariest point in my life where I felt I was the most vulnerable. And all you can hope for and pray for when you start something is that people believe in you. And in starting this, it’s been so reaffirming that not only do people believe in me, but they love what we’re doing and they’re basically helping us in our mission. It’s the best feeling in the world!
Tell more more about your team at Goodable. There’s me. There’s a long time friend of mine named Jonathan Vize. Right now he’s acting sort of in an advisory capacity, but he’s in the role of a co-founder. And as we grow, he’s going to start taking on a bigger role. We have Abhi. Abhi is in his early twenties, but he’s one of the smartest journalists that I’ve ever come across. Very committed, very professional, very hard working. Whatever the future holds for Goodable, I think he’s going to end up managing our newsroom on an ongoing basis. But also, if he chooses not to stay, I think in 10 years he’s going to be a well-established star in Canadian journalism. That’s how highly I think of him.
And then we have people who send us stories from all over the world. We have people in 10 different countries that send us stories and story ideas on a consistent basis. One of the good things about the way we’ve grown is that goodness tends to spread. And when people see that you are trying to be a force for good, they will repay that goodness with goodness. So we haven’t really solicited story ideas, but people are sending them to us. And it’s great because I think when people see good things, they want those good things to be magnified, so they think of us.
There was also this actor, John Krasinski, that came up with a show called Some Good News. And the best thing about what he did was, he asked people to send him good news. And when they would send it to him, they would include us in those messages. They were sending the content to both of us. It was amazing because it shows how highly people think of us in such a short period of time.
When we started, and it was just me tweeting good news stories, I was reaching around 200,000 impressions per month. This is very low for someone who is at CNN. Within 12-15 months, we’ve grown so that in 2020 we are now averaging a reach of around 28 million per month. The growth has been the nicest part of all of this. And it’s all organic. We’ve never done any advertising. We don’t promote any tweets. We don’t run ads on Facebook. It’s all just been 100% natural.
The way that I sometimes describe what we’re doing at Goodable is if you live in a town where the only thing to eat in that town is McDonald’s, that’s fine. This is not a knock against McDonald’s, everybody’s into McDonald’s at some point! But if all there is to eat in the town is McDonald’s, and you’re surviving off of McDonald’s every single day, what happens when somebody in that town opens up a Whole Foods? Suddenly you’re exposed to a food that tastes new and different and healthy and light, and it just makes you feel so good about yourself. That’s what Goodable is, we’re trying to be the Whole Foods in a marketplace that’s full of fast food. And I don’t think Whole Foods is a competitor to McDonald’s. And Whole Foods doesn’t have to get the entire town to eat at Whole Foods. You only need 5 or 10% and you’ll be wildly successful. Why does kindness count?
I think it counts because there’s so much negativity and fear and hatred in the world. I think the human soul has a natural proclivity towards good. There might be small exceptions here or there, but the overwhelming majority of people are hardwired for goodness. They want goodness for themselves and they want goodness for others. And that includes kindness. And we live in a world right now where we’re surrounded by fear and negativity and paranoia, and all these negative emotions. And when the pendulum swings so far in that direction, there’s something inside the human soul that cries out for goodness, that cries out for kindness. And I think that’s just the era that we live in. We are exposed to so much negativity on a daily basis, that there’s something inside of us that’s crying out and saying: “There has to be something better than this. There has to be kindness in the world.” And the human soul has a natural desire to find that kindness and to celebrate that kindness. And I think that’s why kindness is critical today because it’s as important as food and water and oxygen.
Is kindness contagious?
Yeah, 100%. That’s our whole business model. Every religion in the world has a general principle for how the world works. In Hinduism, it’s called karma, in Buddhism, I forget the term for it. In Islam, Judaism, Christianity, the basic rule is that if you do good unto others, good will be done unto you. And that’s how goodness spreads. And we have so much data, it’s not even a saying for us. We have data that backs it up, that shows that good news stories generate about 4.5 times the amount of engagement as bad news stories.
And here’s a simple litmus test that anybody can do: when was the last time that you sent an article that made you feel miserable to your friend? We don’t do that. Because if something makes you feel miserable, why would you inflict that on your friend? But flip it now: when was the last time that you read or saw something that made you feel so happy and you shared it with your friend? We do that all the time. And that is exactly how kindness spreads.
How can people get involved with what you’re doing?
Find us on Twitter. We exist on all platforms, but right now Twitter is the best place for actual news. We’re on Instagram and Facebook, and we’re looking at Snapchat and TikTok. But Twitter drives so much of our engagement because Twitter is the world’s newspaper. So they can find us on Twitter and tag us with their stories, send us their videos of amazing things that are happening in their neighbourhoods or in their lives or in their communities. In that sense, they can actually be reporters for us. And very soon, we’re going to be looking to bring correspondents on board. We’re looking at expanding to having a full time presence in at least three other bureaus around the world. We’re looking at Africa, South Asia, Europe, and we’ve already got plans in place for a bureau in the U.S. So as we get those up and running, we’re going to have even more capacity to start finding good news stories in those areas. And if people want to join us as correspondents or reporters or editors, we would be more than happy to have conversations with them because we have very big plans in 2020, and we’re looking for people who believe in goodness as much as we do.
Just reach out. We have people reaching out to us all the time asking, how can I get involved? And we say, start by sending us stories. Start by acting as like Goodable’s eyes and ears, wherever you are and wherever you live. And that’s the beginning of how we’ve started relationships with so many people.