Do you read a national daily paper? Watch or listen to the news? Follow news streaming on t'internet? Well, maybe for a week, don't bother. And notice what it does for you. At the annual British Adacdemy/British Psychological Society lecture on Tuesday night a question from the audience to Martin Seligman (giver of lecture, "Father of positive psychology") asked whether national news coverage should include positive stories to redress the balance of bad news. Seligman replied without hesitation that he doesn't believe in media manipulation. Then followed a discussion about how readily available bad news is and how we hear it constantly owing to living in a global village. I genuinely believe that by not reading a daily paper, avoiding news on TV and switching from any other radio station to BBC Radio 1 on the hour (it is one of the few stations that doesn't play news on the hour)we are doing a good thing for our mental health and we become no less ignorant for it. News somehow gets inside us without having to pay particular attention anyway. I remember Joanna Lumley talking in that uber sexy voice of hers about the lack of news during her 'Girl Friday' experience as one of the most positive aspects of her time marooned on the island.
So why is news so bad for us? It gives a skewed impression of what life is like, paying way too much attention to the negative events that can occur in life. Thanks to national and international news it could be easy to believe that rape, murder and natural catastrophes, for instance, are something that all of us are likely to experience within our local circle of friends and family. In reality, these things are very unlikely to happen to us. Secondly, bad news makes us feel helpless because we can't do anything to alleviate the suffering of the people whose stories we hear. If you're going to read a paper, far better to make it your local freebie rag than anything else. The reporting is more balanced and we're mote likely to be able to help do something about the unhappy stories we read.
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