Mourning sickness is ‘bad news’
JI’VE BEEN feeling increasingly uncomfortable watching the nightly news on television.We both have. Bulletins – particularly those on the BBC – are increasingly more like a newspaper’s obituary page.
I’m sorry to say it, but sometimes if feels uncomfortably as if TV news is wallowing in tragedy, not simply reporting it.
I’m not alone.This week David Goodhart, a senior member of the think tank Policy Exchange, wrote the following. “On too many nights, the news bulletins at 6pm and 10pm run along tramlines: here’s something about Covid-19; here’s someone who died; here’s a sobbing relative or frontline hero telling you to stay at home, save lives and protect the NHS.”
Do we really need to be shown so many interviews with the terribly distressed relatives of those who’ve lost their struggle with the virus? Surely we all know what grief does to us? It makes us weep; it makes us despair. I’m not sure it’s the job of news programmes to endlessly confront us with seemingly non-stop images of such raw mourning and loss.
What is the higher purpose, exactly? Traditionally in our society, grief is a private thing, something to be managed and got through with the help of friends and family. Repeatedly showing it as items three and four of that night’s news running order seems… well, I’m sorry to say it: exploitative.
Then there’s the finger-wagging we get from some (mercifully not all) newsreaders and, heaven help us, weather forecasters. I don’t object to being told to stay at home by a government minister or a public health official.That’s their job, and they have the authority to do it.
But since when did news hosts have the right to tell us how to behave? One evening this week a weatherman told us it was going to be a beautiful day before bossily adding: “But remember – you mustn’t break the rules!” Just who appointed him as lockdown enforcer?
Stick to the news, please and stick to the weather. Watch that finger-waving
– and please, stop engulfing us in tidal waves of raw emotion.