Manipulative broadcasters are feeding despair
The excessive number of intrusive reports from the hospital front line terrify already frightened people
Janet Daley
I had to turn off the television news half a dozen times last week...... I took this uncharacteristic step because I could not bear to watch, over and over again, the same film reports of appalling distress from hospital intensive care wards, some of them featuring interviews with patients who died after being filmed.
Presumably, the managers of broadcast news believe that this intrusive, emotionally manipulative programming is serving the national interest. By displaying the reality of the Covid epidemic and its consequences for the NHS, they are convincing those who doubt the seriousness of the situation..... that they are being criminally irresponsible.
I am sorry to have to tell all of you who are doing this in good conscience........ that the delinquents who organise illegal raves and the indifferent who host big parties ARE NOT WATCHING.........
The people who are watching,..... are the isolated, the lonely and the already frightened, who are being driven further into the depths of terror and despair.
Of course, it is right to report the genuine state of crisis in the hospitals and to include some testimony from their exhausted staff. But...... the main news bulletins were being led, not by information and badly needed factual evidence, but by these highly personal stories which, in journalistic terms, should be considered feature “colour” pieces..... And the 24-hour news channels were repeating the most upsetting of them, even if they were several days old, every hour of the day and night.
..... The broadcasters will, of course, say that this is all being done with the consent of patients’ families.
.........
They must ask themselves, what is the likely effect of this on those who are not switching off? It can only be a sense of utter helplessness and vicarious grief. Eventually this must result either in resignation – a state of clinical depression – or in anger......
.... destructive of public morale which might, in the end, produce less compliance.....
If the Government, or the NHS, is facilitating this campaign, it would seem to be yet another consequence of their failure to read the effect on the national consciousness of their own bizarre changes of tone.
motoring along according to plan.
.......
Read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion
l have cut a lot out but I think she is right. Not only do we switch off the BBC news, we switch off the BBC.
I have said no caneras no journalists if I am in hospital.