There is a viral story going around social media at the moment that actor Keanu Reeves engaged in a televised debate with tech billionaire Elon Musk about the future of Artificial Intelligence. In the debate, Reeves “destroyed” Musk in front of a wildly enthusiastic audience by arguing in different ways how humans should never want to be replaced by AI, but that they should embrace the technology as a fantastic tool to empower humans. The narrative of what happened in this debate is fascinating, and the story has gained a fair amount of traction because of the negative sentiment towards the founder of Tesla/SpaceX and special assistant to the Trump White House in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE.

And as much as we may love Keanu and know him to be “The One” (at least according to “The Matrix” trilogy of films), the sad part is that there is zero evidence that this televised debate ever took place. There are no video clips (except for apparent AI-generated voice and graphics mash-ups on YouTube), so that pretty much derails the idea that this was a televised appearance.

Color us disappointed, because the fictional argument that Neo…sorry, Keanu was alleged to have made would be the one we would like to make, not just to counter the explosive growth of AI--but also to the practitioners of television news.

Humanity still matters. And a human connection matters most of all.

We never cease to be surprised at the number of television newscasts, both on the network and local level, that seem to forget the core concept that “News is People.” That news is mostly about what people are doing each day. Mostly the bad and the ugly. But sometimes, and most memorably, just the simple act of being human.

As the 1980s began, television found a winning formula for shows that featured people being interesting, mostly by being themselves. On the network level, this format aired on ABC with “That’s Incredible,” and on NBC it was a series called “Real People.” They had been preceded a few years earlier by the debut of what was first called “The MTWTF Show” on Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KPIX-TV in San Francisco. Later changing the name to “Evening Magazine,” the half-hour show was an attempt to expand local programming in the hour between local news and primetime network programming, a time period which Westinghouse had championed for locally-produced programming following the FCC’s implementation of something called the “Prime Time Access Rule” or PTAR for short. That FCC rule prevented the expansion of network programming into the 7 pm (Eastern/Pacific) hour, requiring that local stations program the 7:30 pm time period themselves. While many stations would simply buy “strip” programming, such as game shows that were relatively cheaply made for the time slot, Westinghouse had championed the idea of using the time period for locally produced programming. The company would export the “Evening Magazine” show format and name to other stations in its portfolio, including Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.

Evening Magazine’s success generated interest from other stations outside of Westinghouse’s “Group W” television properties, and the company developed a syndicated version of the program called “PM Magazine” because of a conflict with an already existing “Evening Magazine” on the air in Seattle. “PM Magazine” would air across the country in markets large and small, using a combination of stories generated by local stations alongside stories generated by other stations airing “PM Magazine,” coordinated by a national production team formed to support the program.

Many of those stories would feature regular people doing interesting things or showcase people living in interesting places. The show arrived as local television stations were converting from shooting 16-millimeter film for local news and programming to shooting small-format videotape for the same purpose. Dubbed “Electronic News Gathering,” these days (somewhat) portable cameras and recorders allowed the stations to be able to afford to create this programming on a nightly basis, and it was successful for the next 15 years. When Evening/PM Magazine ended in the early 90’s, some stations brought the idea of doing regular feature stories back into their now-expanding schedule of local newscasts--which would fill those same time periods, if they weren’t lucky enough to have the eventual juggernauts of the 7 pm hour in most markets: the game shows “Jeopardy" and "Wheel of Fortune."

We tell you this bit of television history to revisit the idea that stories about “real people” have a long history of attracting an audience. CBS News has featured its iconic “On The Road” series, pioneered by legendary newsman Charles Kuralt back in 1967. The series continues today under the magnificent storytelling of CBS’s Steve Hartmann. On NBC, Bob Dotson reported his “American Stories” series for 40 years on “Today." Through his writing and teaching efforts, Bob continues to inspire journalists to a human-centric approach to storytelling. The latest edition of his book “Make It Memorable” is a must-read for any aspiring journalist.

There are also solid examples of this kind of reporting in many local TV markets. One such feature we have admired comes from Nexstar’s WSPA-TV in the Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville market stretching across South and North Carolina. The station’s “First Responder Friday” feature from longtime morning anchor Fred Cunningham showcases not only the work of various local police, fire, and other emergency agencies--but also the individuals who work in them. Over the years it has aired, the stories have run the gamut from profiling small town departments to some of the largest teams in the region. Each story showcases the women and men working to serve and protect their communities.

These stories feature a human connection. They aren’t the typical stories where first responders appear in a newscast, usually when something bad has happened. Stories like these fall into the ill-defined category of “Good News” we often hear about in audience research, which the viewers say they would like to see more of.

There is an opportunity to deliver more of that by ensuring that we find more ways to bring some humanity back into newscasts--by featuring more than just the recitation of all the bad things that have happened each day.

As Morpheus tells Neo in The Matrix, “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”