Blaise Tapp: It has never been more important to read the news

Blaise Tapp writes: Although I’ve long been an arch proponent of looking on the bright side, there isn’t a great deal to be cheerful about, unless you’ve got three years’ worth of logs in your shed or, even better, a Swiss bank account.

We’re about to enter potentially the most difficult winter in a generation and millions of us are now seriously fretting about how much our future mortgage payments will cost us, which is in no small part down to our new Prime Minister and Chancellor, a double act who have caused as much chaos to the economy as the Chuckle Brothers did to other people’s homes with a ladder and a couple of pots of emulsion.

As it stands, there doesn’t seem to be much hope of inflation coming down anytime soon and we can all only stand by and watch as food prices continue to rise almost every time we visit the supermarket checkout. I cannot remember the last time I tuned into a bulletin or picked up a newspaper without stumbling across a soul destroying report about the cost-of-living crisis.

The same can be said for the war in Ukraine, where the atrocities committed on the ground are, quite rightly, on a daily basis. Add the recent passing of the Queen and the near fortnight of wall-to-wall coverage to the mix and you’d be forgiven for indulging in a stiff drink or two, whenever Huw Edwards greets us with that slightly pained look most evenings.

It’s said that increasing numbers are going that step further and are disengaging from the news altogether. There will be some who will say ‘good for them’ and might consider taking the same steps themselves but if you’re one of them, I’d urge you to think again.

I’ve lost count of the number of times that folk have told me that they don’t buy newspapers or listen to bulletins because ‘it’s all so miserable’ but then they tend to be sort of people who also believe every word that Big Norma down the corner shop tells them, or the 21st Century version, Facebook. While I can understand that many people might find current affairs troubling at times, burying one’s head in the sand can only increase the ignorance of the individual in the long term.

As Coronation Street’s Reg Holdworth used to proclaim in the ‘90s, knowledge is power and, regardless of how grim the headlines might be, you can only fully engage in society if you understand what is going on. You don’t have to be a card carrying activist to consume news but you can’t hold those in the higher echelons to account if you don’t know what they are up to. Some might argue that is precisely what those who lead us want.

Of course, it isn’t just the miserable tone of the news that turns some people off consuming mainstream news, i.e. content gathered and crafted by actual journalists. Lack of trust is often cited as a reason why some switch off or keep their money in the pocket when they pass the newsagents, and that is an issue that can only be solved by certain sections of the industry itself.

Criticism of journalism is nothing new - reporters have long had an unfairly poor reputation - but bad news fatigue is perhaps a sign of a more sensitive age. When I used to work in newsrooms, we would love nothing more than a heart-warming tale that we could whack on the front page but we were never under any illusion that a big news story, which often meant a death and/or crime, would send our daily sales figures soaring.

As much as the general public protests to the contrary, bad news really does sell, which means that there has never been a more important time to take in what is going on around you.