Do we know less by watching more....

Why is it that with twenty four hour news channels – I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that I am actually less informed than before their birth?

Every time a celebrity is seen in some new designer gear or one decides to outrun the police on a Californian highway it is deemed worthy of a four pundit debate coupled with round the clock coverage.

Does anyone else reach for the paracetemol after watching one of these channels?

The second you switch to them you are confronted with hyperactive presenters that are crammed into one corner of the screen, while the rest is filled with stock quotes, weather forecasts, news headlines and entertainment gossip.

If you can manage to concentrate on the story and not on the myriad of text flying past your eyes as you watch a twenty four news channel, then try and not become disillusioned when you come to the conclusion that it often inaccurate, insufficient and depending on the station you are watching – alarmist.

For instance Sky News had extensive coverage of the storms to hit the UK this March.

Viewers were being warned how dangerous it will be, while a guest from the Denver Coastguard on Sky News told a tale of danger to those at sea and shrugged off any danger to those of us on the mainland.

Poignantly Sky cut to archive pictures of people in supermarket carparks struggling to get into their cars, which was quite amusing as the storm has not yet hit and the guest at hand was not suggesting this would be the case when it does.

I do wonder why twenty four news channels feel the need to "sex-up" and dumb down their content.

Obviously one explanation can be the fact that they must fill the airtime they have allocated. Personally I have little to no interest in watching them pick apart an absurdly and questionably newsworthy topic in a vain attempt to “fill”, I would much rather just watch an actual news broadscast of thirty minutes in length.

Instead I find myself often confused, bewildered and traumatised by the events on my TV screen.