The other week I watched Charlie Brooker’s excellent “Newswipe” (BBC4, Wednesdays) about news anchors. It featured a short film by Adam Curtis (who directed the brilliant “The Power of Nightmares”) about the rise of “oh-dearism”, a tool for news, which drives audiences to apathy and helplessness. This got me thinking – every day we are confronted with news about war, poverty, corruption, economic crisis, terror and more war. Of course these things are happening and need to be in the news – however I am not a believer in the saying that only bad news make for good news and frankly I am not constantly watching the news. My husband tends to start his day watching the news in the morning and then he wonders why he is not a in a good mood. Watching the news is not a good start to the day. News bum me out. Wouldn’t it be nicer to start the day with only positive news? We have whole channels dedicated to bad news – why not have a channel, which gives us respite from the doom and gloom and only shows us positive news about the world we live in. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to scrap the old style news – I just want the option to cheer myself up with nice news, which are life affirming. It’s not only the news, which tend to be negative and depressing, so is most of the other stuff on telly – documentaries such as “Dispatches”, reality TV and soaps. Especially in the current climate we need something more positive to keep us going and the spirits up – this is why I prefer to read books and magazines rather than watching telly.
What do you think? Would you watch a news programme, which only features positive news?
1 comment
Teresa Lewis says:
January 5, 2010 at 3:27 pm (UTC 0)
There’s the Community Channel which is about community projects and at the moment is going through a climate change season til the end of January.
I like to watch the BBC Breakfast Show from 8.40 am when there are human interest stories and comments about future programmes or if awake earlier switch on sometimes and wait for the human interest stories.
Gavin and Stacey is quite funny though. I’ve found quite a few comedy programmes and enjoy Doctors and Casualty. I don’t like the music channels because they are all about hip hop and divas at the moment. Lady Gaga. Ugh.