Advertisement feature in association with Charlie
I spent a very satisfying 20 minutes in bed this morning with Charlie.
I know, sounds saucy doesn’t it? I haven’t taken a fast but efficient lover though, I was actually discovering some NEWS. I say it in capitals because really THE NEWS is not my thing. For a while a few years ago I thought I would try to take an interest and so I set my alarm to wake me up to Radio 4, but after a few weeks I was just so depressed. The awful news seeping into my subconscious from around the world was just too much.
Over the last couple of years it’s become even harder to take anything positive away from the news – it’s been a literal daily death count – and as a form of self-preservation I’ve had to step away completely. I have too much to manage in my own life, I don’t feel able to soak up everything else around me, especially when it’s stuff I can’t do anything about. I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds the news overwhelming?
The downside of filtering out all news of course is that you can feel like a bit of an idiot when people are talking about something big, that clearly everyone in the world knows about but you. ‘Ukraine?’ you say, ‘something going on with them is it?’
Okay, so it’s not quite that bad, but it definitely leaves you feeling ignorant, in all senses of the word when it’s a humanitarian issue.
How do you filter the news though? How can you make sure you have an awareness of what’s going on but still preserve your sanity? How do you pick out the stories that interest you without getting swamped in bad news?
Cue Charlie – your personal journalist.
Charlie is an AI bot who helps you sift through the news in a neutral, healthy way, giving you a selection of headlines and letting you find out more about any that take your interest. It’s a bit like having a partner sat in bed next to you, scrolling the news sites so that you don’t have to. They pick out things that might interest you and read out highlights, sparing you all of the anxiety inducing doom and gloom clickbait that news sites use to increase traffic and revenue.