The Joys of the Six O’Clock News

I don’t normally watch the news.

It was probably twenty years ago that I decided that a daily update of the number of homicides, rapes and car accidents in Toronto just didn’t seem to be adding much to my life. My opinion of the Six O’clock News became quite cynical. I felt it was “too sensational”. It seemed like they only reported the bad stuff and therefore, we were given an overly negative, inaccurate and incomplete portrayal of what was going on in the world.

And so, my news updates have tended to consist of whatever I hear in the car on my way to work in the morning and that has been fine with me.

But a few weeks ago, I was at my dad’s place and the Six O’Clock News appeared before my eyes. As I watched stories of the men who drowned in Toronto and the young boy who was killed in a drive-by shooting and the solders who had been killed overseas, a great new realization hit me: “Thank God this is what they’re reporting on the Six o’clock news!!”

How lucky are we that we live in a country where we still think that someone being killed is newsworthy? There are many places in the world where people of all ages are killed every day and it is simply considered a part of life.

There was a clip about the rescue attempts of a man in Toronto who had been fishing and fell into the river. Divers worked all day trying to find him. Paramedics were on hand in the hopes that they found him alive. In the end, they just worked hard to find the body so that there could be a proper burial. How many places in the world wouldn’t or couldn’t go to such lengths for a single man’s life?

There were stories of assault, robbery, illegal drug operations, car accidents and violence in the schools. In a world that we are led to believe is going down the tubes, that these things are still newsworthy says that they still shock and upset us. This is a good sign.

And what about the traffic? Lots of news about commuters stuck in traffic jams each morning and evening. Terrible, eh? Just think of all these industrious people in their cars going to and from their jobs each day making a living so that they can raise families, pay taxes and have financial independence. Hmm, not the worst problem to have to deal with.

And think of the great lengths we go to in order to find missing children. And what about all the magazines covered with stories about Brittany Spears and whether or not she is a fit mother for her two little boys? Is it ridiculous and sensational to follow around this poor woman with binoculars and dissect her life with a microscope? Yes. But the fact that her fitness for motherhood is so phenomenally newsworthy, tells us that as a society, we still believe that the welfare of children is important.

And then we get to hear about relationships like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. We hear about their fights (real or not), their break-ups (true or not) and their angry ex-girlfriends (angry or not). Apparently we find couples having issues worth reading about. Or maybe we just like that fact that extremely beautiful, successful people have the same problems that we do. In the end, the fact remains that we still think that relationships matter. Otherwise, no one would care. The general public would just say, “Oh, just break up already and spend your life alone. It’s better that way!”. But we don’t. We want the relationships to work. We want people to be happy. This is a good thing.

It would seem that watching the Six O’clock News shows us that, as a society, we still believe that being good to others, caring for our children, education, peace-keeping, relationships, working hard, and preserving life is important to us.

I think that this is a good sign.

(This column was originally published in the Goderich Signal Star in September, 2008)