When did the media get so ghoulish? Has the 24 hours news cycle led to us forget that many people whilst wanting to know the latest news, don’t want it to be exploited to the nth degree?

I’m pretty hardcore. Much prefer gritty documentaries, grainy films about war and human suffering to comedy and period romances. But I have not been able to stomach the recent reporting of “tragic” events.

It seems to me, the great British public is growing to love a good tragedy. First came the school bus crash in Cumbria in which two teenage school pupils died. Awful. But I knew it was awful, I didn’t need to listen to endless interviews with “experts” and callers to radio phone-ins to confirm how tragic it was.

Caller after caller being encouraged to talk about how they thought the parents of these pupils would be feeling, how they would feel in their position. Too much. Young people, dying before their time…….is sad enough. Leave it there.

This was soon followed by the terrible shootings in Cumbria, the lowest point of many low points of which was the endless interviews in newspapers, on radio and tv with an eight year old boy who encountered the killer. This young boy was made to repeat his story over and over again. He shouldn’t have been there. He should have been at home with his family being helped to forget such a frightening experience, not being made to re-live it time after time.

Yet, nowhere did I see this questioned.

I trained and worked as a journalist on regional newspapers. I used to interview the families of people who had died as a result of accidents. I never liked it, but at least it wasn’t dragged out. One interview, story written, move on.

And, I don’t think we can blame the media. We get the media we deserve. It’s us. We love a good tragedy because it enables us to feel sorry for someone else, which makes us feel better about ourselves.

Well, I think we should all take a step back and put our energies elsewhere. Instead of putting endless flowers in spots where people we have never known have died or calling into radio stations to talk about how people we’ve never met might be feeling, let’s look after the living. Let’s celebrate the good things in life and stop praying on misery.

Sarah Chadwick