How to kill your soul with "the news"

Martyn Lewis, the former television newsreader, once said that the news programmes focussed too much on the negative. They didn’t, according to him, show enough good news; I wonder if it is destroying our compassion.

Nowadays, if there is a major disaster, like an earthquake or mass shooting, the news programmes saturate the airwaves with their coverage in their attempts to examine every possible aspect of the said catastrophe. They are so desperate to wallow in disaster or despair that it brings to mind the song “Channel D” from the album “Mosaic of Disarray”: “I’m wondering if I’m in the same world as you, what is the truth?/ Death, destruction, doom, disease, disaster and depression/”. (Read my review here:  http://www.abctales.com/story/markihlogie/review-album-%E2%80%9Cmosaic-d....)

We know that the editors believe this focus on death and doom pushes up the viewing figures for the programme or station, so that explains why they do it. But what effect does it have on the audience?

By treating and presenting other people’s suffering as mere entertainment, they are dehumanising their viewers. It risks creating “doom addicts” and the thought of that makes me uneasy. It is reminiscent of “snuff” films (again from “Channel D”: “My remote control got a life of its own,/ Need to watch real people die/”). Also it has much in common with addiction to over-violent videogames.

Paradoxically, what drives people to watch the news as though it were entertainment is the same need satisfied by horror films. It is the need to cope with our fears, especially of the unknown, by watching horrific events happening to other people from the safety of our armchair. The doom addicts sometimes find their distorted worldview becomes more real to them than reality and they end up preferring it to reality, like drug addicts.

This is killing our souls – that’s the warning from “Channel D”. Let’s take notice of it before it’s too late.