… unless you’re not quite miserable enough already!

We all seem to love the news, more so now it’s available 24/7. But is it a good thing to keep tuning in to Sky News or CNN, or whichever is your favourite news channel? Or is it becoming a drug?

The thing about the news is that … well, bad news is good news (for the news channels, at least)! The worse the news, the more newsworthy it is! The more shocking, the more lurid, and the more doom laden, it seems, the more compelling we find it.

If you find yourself automatically switching to a news channel on the hour, stop and ask yourself … why? If it’s the second or third time today (or more!), then you really have to ask – do I need to keep posted of every little update? Most of the time the news channels churn out bucketloads of repetition anyway, so chances are you won’t miss much if you miss a bulletin. And the news is constantly punctuated by sports news (stick it on the sports channel!) and endless weather updates (if you’re really curious about the weather, hey, just look out the window!).

And the latest news is … bad!

But here’s the thing – it’s practically all bad news (almost by definition). And can it really be doing you any good to keep on seeing disasters, famines, floods, murders, terrorist outrages, shooting sprees, starving children, bombings, stranded refugees … all day long, every day? Unless you’re a politician, or aiming to be one, there’s almost certainly very little you can do about any of it. But endlesly reliving it is almost certainly having a negative effect on you.

You don’t think so? Okay, imagine if there were muggings and gang fights in the street in your area … practically every day! And you saw them happening. Imagine, if you can, if there were house fires, burst water mains, gas explosions, car crashes, rapes, murders, even the occasional plane crash … all within fifteen minutes walk of your front door! And you saw a lot of it, or heard about it from the neighbours. In great detail! Actually, in horrifying detail, and repeatedly! Don’t you think that would affect you?

Don’t you think you’d want to urgently reconsider living in that neighbourhood? You’d probably be in a constant state of fear and distress, blockading the doors and windows and making it a rule never to open the door to anyone, ever. I mean, ever!

Hold on … we’re actually welcoming all this stuff into our homes!?

But when we watch the news on TV, on the hour, all hours of the day and night, we’re letting all that negativity and brutality right into our living rooms. We’re not just letting it in, we’re actively welcoming it in, like an old friend! I mean, c’mon, how many times do you need to see a reporter shoving a microphone in someone’s face and demanding of them “And how does that make you feel?” How many times do you need to see a child with cancer lying in a hospital bed, looking pale and miserable? How many times do you need to see the relatives of a missing child or a murder victim begging for information or justice? How many times do you need to see the misery of families whose lives have been ruined by repeated flooding of their properties? Is watching these things, repeatedly, actually helping anyone? Really?

Could you live without it? Well … could you?

There is an alternative, if you’ve finally realised you’re exposing yourself unnecessarily to endless horrors: limit yourself to one bulletin a day. I know, it’s a bit like asking an alcoholic to settle for just one drink a day! And I’m a bit of a news junkie myself, so I know it’s not easy weaning yourself off it, but constantly flooding your mind with whatever the news channels choose to show us really is a recipe for disaster (or at least misery).

So all I’m suggesting is … do yourself a favour – cut right back on your news fix. Or even, if you’re feeling very brave, cut it out completely – yep, go cold turkey, if you think you can manage it. Go on, take a deep breath … be ruthless! Don’t worry, the politicians will still carry on trying to discredit each other and make each other look weak and ineffectual, even though you’re not paying attention to them anymore. And the disasters … they’ll still go on just the same. It won’t make the slightest difference whether or not you’re still halfway participating in them, almost reliving the horrors each time you watch yet another batch of ‘BREAKING NEWS’.

And don’t worry about the news channels (right, yeah … as if you would!). There’ll always be plenty more slack-jawed news junkies ready and willing to turn to them, lining up, begging for yet another fix. And they’ll still be there, as always, eagerly providing it, knowing full well the damage it might be doing, but, just like any other scummy dealer, not caring in the slightest.

Oohhh … okay … if you still insist on watching the news, I suppose there can be some compensations, sometimes … hmmm …