The BelTel has an interview with BBC Broadcaster Declan Harvey. This section caught my interest:
“The most common remark I get when I’m out and people recognise me is they say, ‘I don’t really watch that much [news] anymore. I just find it gives me anxiety or I find it too depressing to watch the news.’
“That is a serious question that the news industry has to deal with. How do we reflect the world we live in truthfully, and honestly and authentically, without just giving people anxiety to the point where they are switching off and everyone’s a bit more anxious these days.
“Honestly it is the thing I get [told] the most, [people who] say, ‘Oh, I don’t really watch it anymore because it’s too depressing.’
“We all wish there was more positive news. It’s an ongoing and really present struggle for all news broadcasters. The BBC is not unique in this. There is a magnetic pull towards the negative news for very many reasons.”
Though not all news is bad news, we say, so celebrating the good is as important.
“Absolutely, and why shouldn’t the good things in our society be celebrated. But there’s also ways of framing stories that may appear inherently bad.
“For example, our courts are full of cases involving sexual crime. So is that a story about the bad thing that the perpetrator did? Or is it a story about the strength of the victim who came forward and said, ‘You won’t do this to me or anyone else and get away with it’?
“They are conversations that we have to have because that is a story about strength and empowerment, rather than a story that will make people nervous and fearful of an attack.
“I spend most of my days thinking: how are we telling the story? What language do we use? Where is the emphasis? What’s the really important thing? It’s a huge team effort and I’m not the only person doing that. It’s a team effort in real life; we don’t get it right all the time but we know people find the news stressful. It’s something that the entire industry is facing.”
“But the danger is real. The danger of people turning off news and just getting a tiny snippet on TikTok and moving on.”
Telling people to stop following the news is advice I have been giving for years. Ironic as I run Slugger I know.
I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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