ABC News Panic

This is ABC News Breakfast co-host Virginia Trioli, in a recent promo:

I reckon when people wake up in the morning they have one primary concern: is the world safe? Has anything happened drastically overnight that I need to know about and that I need to worry about.

I don’t know if this is how 24-hour news reporters justify themselves generally, or if Trioli just happens to know a lot of very stressed, panicky people.

Is “is the world safe” honestly and truly the very first thing that comes to your mind in the morning? Is it even neurologically possible for that to be your one primary concern, before, say, eating breakfast?

Now, I enjoy a good dose of global catastrophe-voyeurism as much as anyone else, but not before something infinitely more important: deciding if and when I need to actually get out of bed and do something productive. I first need to establish this mental framework before I’m capable of entertaining lesser questions of what disasters may have befallen humanity during my state of unconsciousness.

Maybe I’m just in the wrong demographic, and I have nothing against Virginia Trioli, but surely we ought not to be encouraging a culture of panic.