Diary of a News Junkie

 
Mine is a thoroughly modern paradox – which brings the twitchy zeitgeist-chasing part of me some comfort. I’m a news junkie who is repelled by the news. Perhaps ‘news fetishist’ is a better description for my condition: the more likely that I’ll be scared or appalled, the higher the chance I’ll be glued.

But while I enjoy regarding my relative mental stability and continuing penchant for the human race as a victory against the oppression of constantly updating nuggets about all the bad stuff that’s happening round the world, I’m finding that in reality, my addiction is grinding me down.

I don’t want to lose faith in my fellow man, or in the idea that the future can offer my children a decent life. But I know that the sunny disposition I seek is unlikely to thrive alongside my dependency on news forums that are turned on by threat and their own power to spread fear and misanthropy.

I also find it hard to retain a sense of humour about the current fashion for providing respectable platforms for the angry, uninformed and prejudiced. What good does it really do me to tune into 5 Live’s daily diet of phone-ins, so often driven by the dynamics of the bloodthirsty punitive minority for whom a sacrifical slaughter a day seems to keep the men in white coats away?

So I’ve volunteered to be taken off the drip and live without news for a week. I know it’ll be tough, but the BBC makes it a little easier on me by ludicrously leading with the briefly hospitalised Prince Philip’s return to the “perky” state we all “know and love” the day before I begin.

A break from the madhouse may, I hope, do my psyche some good. A week of floating in a bubble of blissful oblivion, cosseted from feral teenagers, cheesily nicknamed serial killers, the spiralling economy and the doomed environment will surely feel like one long holiday under the duvet.

When I speak to media-savvy BBC radio regular Dr Stuart Flanagan about what to expect, he warns me that the first few days may not feel like sinking into a big warm cushiony embrace. He says that while I might come to accept my situation by the fourth or fifth day, at first I could feel tense, alienated or irritable. He suggests my ‘symptoms’ may in fact resemble withdrawal from a behavioural addiction like gambling. I suspect he’s exaggerating, or has read too many AA leaflets…