AM I alone in getting sick and tired of television reporters padding around intensive care units and speaking, in hushed, sepulchral tones, about the work toll on doctors and nurses and the death toll on patients?

We had two examples tonight. On the BBC news we were treated to visions of weeping nurses, depressed doctors and dying patients at the Royal London Hospital, and then on Look North a virtual repeat of these scenes, but this time at St James’s Hospital in Leeds.

The Covid statistics on infection and death are frightening enough, without such unwarranted and intrusive behaviour by camera crews.

If I were a hospital manager I would not let them in.

Neither the hard-pressed staff, nor the patients, need it.

If I was in intensive care and in danger of dying, the last thing I would want is the lens of a television camera trained on me!

It reminds me of the apocryphal story of the television reporter who asked: “Tell me, Mr Smith, how did you feel when you heard that your wife had been murdered, you daughter had been raped, and your house had burnt to the ground?” Did Mr Smith reply: “Well, these things happen. You just have to take the rough with the smooth and get on with life.”

We hear a lot about the effects of Covid and lockdown on mental health. Well, television coverage certainly does nothing to improve my mental health when it focuses so intensively on disease, disaster and death!

Richard M Billinge,

Heworth Village,

York