I am an ‘RTE Morning Ireland’ girl- always have been!
As a PR consultant, and a former political adviser, I have been addicted to the news for a long time. But lately I’ve been finding myself sneakily switching over to Hector on 2fm between news bulletins.
It’s not that I’m not interested in the news, but Hector (somewhat indulgently) calls his listeners ‘soldiers of the dawn’. I’m not sure why this is so appealing, but sometimes when I am in traffic at 7.45am, I feel like a soldier of the dawn!
Isn’t it enough just to be up, to be on my way to work? Do I have to listen to a full 40 minutes of bad news stories before I get there as well?
Hector says things like ‘keep her lit’ and ‘keep it country’, and he plays very upbeat, happy tunes. It’s nice!
Recently I heard Kate Adie, veteran BBC news correspondent, tell a radio presenter, that people don’t sit down at 9pm anymore, to watch ‘the news’, as we once knew it.
We now have news on tap, – iphones, car radios, twitter, facebook- if something happens, you will hear about it -so it’s no longer surprising at 9pm. Whether you are interested or not, you can’t escape it. If something is happening, you will hear about it.
As Kate Adie pointed out, news has a function, whether you care about it or not, it acts as a warning, a heads up. It reminds you to look after your life. That’s a good thing.
Trouble is, sometimes you need to escape it.
A constant diet of personal insolvency, Anglo tapes, dissolving the Seanad, shootings, (and that’s before you’ve had a coffee) can’t be good for you – It is ok to tune out from time to time, to take a break from your life, to unplug from it all.
Sometimes you just need to listen to a song, simple as that.
An MD of a large organisation in the financial services sector recently told me he listens to LyricFm on the way to work. He says it’s good for the soul, and besides, he has the rest of the day to hear all the bad news.
So by all means, listen to the news, get the headlines, as Kate Adie says, take the heads up, and look after your life. But there’s no harm in changing the channel every once in a while.
..You might actually arrive to work in a good mood!
Jill Collins is a PR Consultant and Media Training expert with Fuzion PR who have offices in Cork and Dublin
