We don't believe in shying away from problems, but we believe that as journalists, we have a responsibility to give people balanced reporting and tell people good news as well as bad news. Balanced reporting means the media have to report not only about problems, but also what is being done that is effective - success stories that show the ordinary heroes among us all. For most Americans, that is every day reality. While the program addresses issues affecting the country at large, you've chosen to profile the efforts of local communities from Oregon to South Carolina. While the problems of teen violence, hate crime, street crime and drug dealing are national in scope, they occur in local settings.
Local problems rely on local solutions.
We don't dispute that all those are parts of the problem. But we found that when there were solutions, almost all were generated locally by local people who decided they had to take the initiative and not point the finger at outsiders. Americans taking responsibility to improve the quality of life in the most basic sense, namely personal safety. There is absolutely no question that you can take situations that look impossible and turn them around. In our first episode in Washington, we go into an urban war zone where there have been multiple killings, both of street fighters and innocent bystanders.