Sometimes the news is darn depressing. And it doesn’t have to be a gigantic event like the World Trade Center attack or the Christmas Tsunami to bring on despair. It can be the report about the family pet who died outside the burning home even after firefighters fashioned some sort of mouth-to-snout resuscitation. Or the elderly man who wandered away from his home and was found frozen to death in the woods just beyond his back yard. Sad tale upon sad tale, every night on the TV news.
You’d think it would drive the news staff crazy to be subjected to this as a line of work, but it’s really the opposite. I’m living proof that news anchors and reporters really are crazy, but in this way, they’re the sanest people around and we can all learn something by their example.
As anchor of the evening news on WTVH-TV in Syracuse, New York for nearly three decades, audience members often asked me if I got depressed reporting so much sadness and crime every night. The answer was no. I had therapists all around me in the form of other anchors.
Once the commercial hit, we started started talking about everything that wasn’t the news. Sometimes it was our plan for the dinner hour, but many times, it was about what we had just watched on the program. We talked and we shared. Sometimes we got momentarily weepy, often we were outraged, but we always got it out.
We did the weather segment, and then the sports segment, but as those commercials kept coming so did our feelings. By the time we got home to our families we were all talked out. No more anger and grief. Our feelings were in their rightful place, the guy next to us.
Seriously, you can’t get stuck with something if people take it from you, and in that way my news colleagues were my therapists, and I like to believe I was theirs. We took the stress away from each other. I used to be surprised my non-news industry friends so often felt blue about the news and now I know why. Without the benefit of the other anchor and the meteorologist and the sports guy, the news can really get to you.
So if you feel down about what’s happening in the world, and you can’t find a news anchor, or a weatherman or a sports guy, pick up the phone and call a friend. Tell them what you just saw and heard. They’ll take it from you. And if you do it quickly, you’ll still have time to catch the last story of the newscast, the one about the water-skiing squirrel in Iowa.
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