I want to watch the news what is being shown is something different.After the game with Venice, coach Banchi spoke in a press conference, “We had difficulty approaching and interpreting the game. This cannot increase public understanding of what is happening, only add to anger, discord and mental distress. We – and our children – are expected to witness screaming, bleeding, angry people, night after night. I cannot see that relentless real-time depictions of horror is instilling any virtue. It is one thing to be reminded occasionally of the suffering of others, and of our own impotence when it comes to changing the world around us.

As with bad news generally, its appeal was said to be an evolutionary response to potential danger – humans crave a warning. This led to sensations of fear, sadness and anger, and an increase in cases of depression and trauma. People obsessively monitoried news of the disease by the hour. During Covid addictions to “doomsurfing” and “doomscrolling” soared. We can do nothing directly about them and must remain spectators of other people’s agony. The evils of the outside world are in a different mental sphere. But that is when it is personal and we have some agency over events. They advise us to analyse it, assess the risk, seek a way forward and take action. Psychologists tell us how to cope with bad news when it affects us personally. What can we do? Should we shout, march, write, shut up? Mostly we feel sad and return to our lives, pretending nothing has changed. And after the blame comes the overwhelming sense of impotence. Tearful victims get more time than decision-makers or experts. Since every vox pop from Gaza must be preceded or followed by one from Israel, viewers are drawn into arguments fuelled by heat not light. Horror fuels a dangerous instinct, that of blame. In this respect, television is in a different league from radio and the print press. Yet it is assumed that we cannot handle this, and instead are given endless vox pops with people on the ground.

This is tabloid television, offering a ghoulish gloss on what news should be about, which is facts and their informed interpretation. The evening news coyly says scenes are “too awful to show” and then that “viewers may find some scenes distressing”, as if to draw us from whatever else we are doing.

Now we have the most intensive, 24/7 coverage of extreme violence that I can recall.

We not who we are