Even at the best of times, most of the news is bad and we all develop strategies to deal with it. The most obvious ploy is to avoid the news media completely in the spirit of old proverbs like ‘no news is good news’ and ‘ignorance is bliss’.

To me, however, ignorance is not so much blissful as boring, and no news, far from seeming like good news, gives me a creepy feeling that I’m groping in the dark.