After saying I don't like New Year's resolutions I'm now setting myself a new year challenge to give up watching the news on TV and listening to it on the radio.
Why?
Well more and more I find myself being angered by how the news is reported and what media outlets consider to be news worthy. I've wondered for a while if watching the news was making me more anxious and unhappy. So I'm going to see if it's true. By giving up watching and listening to the news.
My news habits
I've always watched and listened to the news. I grew up with Radio 4 on the radio and my parents watch the news almost religiously. As many people do, including me. As a child and teenager I I prided myself in being "well informed" and really didn't understand why some of my friends showed little interest in the news.
For a long time now I've been media aware enough to question what I see on the news. My unease at how the news is reported and how what is "news worthy" is decided, has grown recently.
But it's for more personal reasons that I'm going to cut out the broadcast news. I just think I watch and listen to too much news and it's making me unhappy and anxious.
News junkie
I start my day by listening to the news, then I usually listen to 5Live radio for a lot of the day whilst working from home. In the evening I'll watch the 6 o'clock news, the local news and sometimes even the channel 4 news! Then at night there's the 10 o'clock news and News Night. That's a lot of hours being devoted to news. Way too much.
I mean that's an extreme case but I reckon that on an average day I consume at least 2 hours of broadcast news.
The trouble with broadcast news is that unless you switch off you have no choice in which stories you want to follow. If I rely on the Internet for my news consumption then I pick and choose what to read.
The challenge
I am to forego all broadcast news for a month I will only get my news from Twitter - where I follow many different news outlets from around the world. So I can still be "informed" but I choose what to read and when I want to read it. If I find I'm spending 4 hours looking for news on twitter then I'll rethink this but I have a feeling my twitter consumption will remain about the same.
I'll keep you updated as to how I go! I think I'll miss Drive time on 5 live the most. I love grumpy Peter Allen :-(
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