The reason I don't watch the news

For anyone who doesn't know, my husband is a news junkie. When I first met him he would happily watch the 5pm news on one channel, switch to the 6pm news on a different channel and possibly throw in a 7pm news for good measure. I could never understand it. I mean.. it's the same news!!

Anyway, in recent years (probably since having Annabelle) I've developed a particular aversion to watching the news at all. For starters, it's not really "THE" news, is it? It's what the programming people want us to see. And it's ALL bad. So when Annabelle wants to sing and dance to the Wiggles and Mel is having a meltdown about missing the news, I say to him "Of course I see your point! Why would we have laughter and sunshine in our loungeroom when we could have all that death and destruction??!" (And usually he's happy to leave it on the Wiggles.)

But last night he texted me and asked me to watch the news at 6pm because he wouldn't be home yet. He said there have been power outages across Adelaide due to the heat wave and I figured that was a good reason to tune in, to see if it might affect us. Bear in mind, we are up to our 3rd day of mid-40 degree heat. Adelaide is hot, tired and cranky and we don't need black-outs.

When I turned on the news, here is a rundown of what I saw:
- The 40+ temperatures are here for at least the next 7 days (excellent)
- Some homes have lost power for 15 hours. They have had to throw out the entire contents of their fridge and have had no sleep for two days. Many of these people are pensioners.
- Several thousand other homes have lost power for up to 45 minutes at a time (across 50 suburbs) due to the extreme overload on the power suppliers caused by the heat wave
- Last night, a couple's house burned down due to the air-conditioner being on 24 hours a day. It overheated and caught fire in the ceiling. (Did I mention our own air conditioner has been running 24/7?)

But it's not all about the yucky heat wave. There IS other news of course....

- A 4 year old girl was thrown off the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne by her dad and later died.
- A 50 year old cyclist from McLaren Vale was killed by a drink driver, leaving his wife and two kids behind.
- A 5 day old baby was abducted by her father and had been in the searing heat for more than 3 hours before being captured by police.

And that's when I changed channel and resolved not to watch the news again.