Can you perhaps look at bad news with one eye, to damage your spiritual well -being in 2025 at least not irreparably? Or is it with TV news all or nothing and therefore choosing between or head in the daily exchange pool of horror and Human Interest Or take off the TV and then turn off your horror in a pillow every night without ‘the images’?
Enough reason: renewed horrors in Gaza, the bitter kninking of Ukraine, demolition rage of Trump.
Research from EenVandaag It turned out at the end of last year that more than a quarter of 24,000 respondents ‘often’ avoid news. And then it was about viewers who called themselves more than average in news. War in particular made them gloomy or anxious, but also climate news. Just like-how is it possible-reports about Dutch politics and the Schoof cabinet.
So then no longer look, or with one eye? Or would there – very cynical idea – in the broadcasting magazines like Trigger Warning A Nutri score must come for bad TV news, from A (inevitably) via B, C and D to E (absolutely avoiding).
You can of course also refuse to avoid and look the sample in the face. Not as a disaster tourist, but as a convinced avoidance refusal- Something to be.
Those who are in favor of, after another week full of geopolitical turbulence, could very well look back at the three episodes of The Zensky Story, The astonishing documentary about the Ukrainian president who was already broadcast by the VPRO and of which the last part was shown on Thursday at the Zuiderburen, with whom we were already pleasantly reunited under the ‘thinker of the Netherlands’.
The documentary (2024) by director Michael Waldman, a biographical portrait of Zelenksy on the basis of conversations with the man himself, his wife and friends, is a compulsory cost for every viewer who wants to sharpen his spirit, seeks nuance or dares to think, but especially wants to appreciate morality over power or murw fucked ‘realism’.
Just horrifying
Now the courage, perseverance and the PR talent of Zensky have been countless times and in many keys since the start of the Russian war against his country, with matching statements of admiration and solidarity. But now we are three years later, Ukraine is in danger of becoming a billionaire broker in Washington and a war criminal in Moscow, and here too the tiredness is starting to strike, the tendency to make the consumption to the consumption.
But then take a good look at this documentary (also on NPO Start). The slow, sinister prelude to the Russian raid, the first nightly bombing of Kyiv, the determination of the Zensky and his confidants, and his confidants, the tough resistance and the Russian setbacks, the Bedsja – it is just as huddling as the first time it was shown.
In fact, it gets extra charge from the recent, repulsive treatment of Zensky, with life danger to his post, by two spoiled corps balls.
Psychologists of the more popular kind of warning for years to destroy by bad news that you “can’t do anything about”. It makes stress and gloomy, weakens your brain and is also a waste of time, sums Psychology Magazine Five years ago the adverse effects already on. So moderate or renounce, just like meat and flies.
Yes, but what then? Live as the hollow men From TS Eliot, who only whisper and see nothing?
Bad news is depressing, it will be true, but it is also a message, a call. You can flee, but you can’t hide.