It's not what happened, it's how you feel about it that's important

For a long time I've felt annoyed with TV news and how it's presented, with everyone increasingly desperate to make everything extremely dramatic and full of import, when generally it isn't. It's a bit dull.

There is also a lot of time examining how people feel about what happened, increasingly on the BBC how people who weren't there and have nothing to do with it, feel. "Send in your random, whittering views no matter how full of bile and bigotry." It's as if the BBC doesn't think any of these people have blogs!

I was particularly annoyed about this this week with the explosion in Exeter. I'd only heard bits about it and, with Exeter being where I went to uni, I wanted to know exactly what was going on. I tuned in to BBC Spotlight, who seemed to devote most of the evening to the events. At the end they handed over to their home affairs correspondent (who luckily wasn't doing his usual presenting from country fairs, or an under-5s basketball tournament) to give us the latest. Instead he wanted us to reflect on the impact and emotion of the last few days.

I'd really rather not. I'd just like to know exactly what happened please, without being told how I should be feeling about it with dramatic music, gurning faces or hyperbole.

It really would be quicker, I think, if they just introduced a system of on-screen emoticons next to each headline (happy, sad, bemused, nauseated) that tell us all exactly how we should respond to any given event.