opinion
Breaking the News
Brian White lives in south Indre with his wife, too many moles and not enough guitars
I
t came as an existential smack round the chops at the end of a long afternoon slog in the garden recently. I had packed away the tools, yelled a parting expletive at the moles and flopped down in the shade. In the kitchen my wife was preparing dinner, the iPod wafting “The Seal Lullaby”, an achingly beautiful choral work by Eric Whitacre. The music seemed to swathe everything: the sweltering stillness, the birds swooping in the dense evening air, my own fatigue. The alchemy of all these things caught me unaware, unfurling one of those perfect moments of tranquillity. Slumped beneath our absurdly large banana tree, I realised I had stopped breathing. Serenity enveloped me and whispered, “Enough already.” I understood. Transcendence like this is rare so it’s wise to listen. My sensory overload was signalling a different tiredness: the continual mental recoiling from the daily news. The past 18 months – I’m sure you’ve noticed - have seen a barrage of headlines which weren’t so much to be read as fought off. Coming on top of five years of the Brexit/Trump onslaught, (Spoiler Alert: I detest both), it has been, even for a lifelong news junkie like me, exhausting. In the majestic calm of the garden, my guard was down; news fatigue hit home and tipped me into a mental pitstop. I’m
12 etcetera
sure I’m not alone in being pummelled senseless by the daily roster of impenetrable graphs and heart-wrenching statistics. Desperate compassion for other human beings, fused with anger at the attendant political shenanigans, leaves you wrung out like a wet towel. I know whereof I speak. I’ve often ended the day squeezed in a corner, gibbering and clutching my teddy. Only Mrs W, with an enticing round of “Follow the Côtes du Rhône” has coaxed me back.
went off in pursuit of the day’s headlines, I now run for dear life with them snapping at my heels. The news media is ubiquitous in its battle for our attention. Nuance and perspective are lost when a story billed as ‘a dramatic development’ is soon jettisoned for a different one. Nothing is a headline if everything is a headline; the modern news cycle is insatiable at one end and incontinent at the other.
For me, finally, it’s reached overload. So, enough already. I have turned away from I’ve been a pain in many a posterior over the perpetual bunfight, I shun the inmy news fixation, it depth analysis. I’ve goes way back. Dr deleted all the Martin Luther King ‘Breaking News’ Nothing is a headline if everything apps and consigned Jr’s murder when I is a headline; the modern news was twelve probably my teddy to our set me off. With the cycle is insatiable at one end and local déchetterie, zeal of the innocent, (he’s too wineincontinent at the other I joined the town stained to be of use library and set about to anyone). True, I the US Civil Rights still skim the movement. The chasm between ‘reading morning headlines with my first belt of about’ and ‘understanding’ yawned wide caffeine, just to make sure the sky hasn’t before me, on this and countless other fallen, but no longer do I delve into every topics. I’ve spent much of the following single story. half century trying to bridge it. I might make light of it here but there is Propelled by “I really should try to grasp such a thing as being too well informed. If this”, I always overdid things. I remember a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, too being on holiday with my brother and our much is no picnic, either. two girlfriends when President Richard The daily drumbeat of negativity will Nixon resigned in 1974. I’d been following drown out all other voices unless we the Watergate story and no way was consciously push it to the background. I’ve Nixon’s lousy timing going to cheat me out come round to the realisation that the of the blanket coverage of its final act. So really serious stuff will find me anyway, naturally, I tore off to find a newspaper there’s no necessity to seek it out. which, of course, didn’t endear me to anybody. A reminder: I was 18 and on So, one day at a time, as they say. I’m not holiday with a very attractive girl at the claiming I’m entirely free from my time. See? affliction but maybe the fever has broken. Hopefully ‘no news’ really is what they say Yet today’s 24-hour rolling news coverage has flipped the equation. Where I once it is.
