Though I spent more than 50 years in the news business, I find myself watching less and less news.

Doctors say that stress is a killer. It triggers things that result in death.

Stress I get from TV news reports these days.

I still subscribe to several newspapers. But we have not had cable or satellite TV service for five years now. I still check CNN and Fox, MSNBC and Newsmax. But I do that on line via their Web pages.

With words on paper or on computer screens, I can read the headlines and decide whether to subject myself to the rest of the story.

With television, regardless of whether it comes via broadcast, cable, satellite or internet streaming services, my ears are at the mercy of whoever is talking or, these days, shouting — and most of the shouting is not news.

“Russian missile destroys Ukrainian ammo depot” is news.

“Putin is Hitlerian,” is not news. That could be opinion, which (in theory) ought to be informed judgments based on fact. These days, primal screams or outright lies are shoved at viewers under the label of “It is opinion, so it is something you need to see.”

No, I do not need to hear that hogwash in order to be informed about what is going on in the world.

Let’s go back a bit, to Sept. 12, 2001, the day after Al Qaeda’s horrific attack on the New York Trade Center, the Pentagon and, heroically aborted into a Pennsylvania field, the White House or the Capitol.

Osama bin Laden spewed his vitriolic denunciations of the United States. President Bush gave us his first reactions.

Did both of those expressions deserve equal coverage?

Again, nope.

But today, Fox News seems to want us to give Tucker Carlson equal billing with, say, Bill Hemmer.

Bill Hemmer is an American journalist. Tucker Carlson is an American television host and political hogwash spreader, not a journalist. Fox itself testified in a court proceeding that reasonable people view Carlson and his cohorts as entertainers, not as journalists.

Hemmer leans right-wing, sure. But he bases his presentations on what has happened. Carlson tells us what is in his head. I can’t dignify his hogwash by saying he “tells us what he thinks,” because “thinking” implies rational examination of something, not just bloviating.

When I read Fox News reports via an internet page, I can go past the headlines if the script is Hemmer’s, or ignore the hogwash if it comes from Carlson.

If I watch a TV set, however, I also listen. Those spoken words bore into my memory with more sticking power than do written words, which pass through more measured filters.

Stress results. I find myself reacting, either in agreement or in disagreement. That produces more stress.

So am I less well informed?

I don’t think so.

I came of age at a time when my parents devoted perhaps 20 minutes each late afternoon to reading the daily newspaper, then, depending on what else was going on, tuned into the TV set at either 6 or 11 p.m. for a half-hour of news — that was news, sports, weather, commercials. Thirty minutes, no more.

Oh, we did get some more news. In those days, everybody with school age children turned on the radio before changing out of pajamas. We found out whether school was called off — it almost never was, because most of us walked to school — and what the weather might be like during the day. We also got a farm report and some folksy chatter.

But that was 20 minutes at most, sandwiched between a breakfast bite and hauling a packed gym bag out the door en route to school.

And we were not markedly less well informed in the 1940s or 1950s than we are today. Back then, we didn’t know much about the Kardashians; that information came once a week or once a month in magazine formats. If a shooting occurred in Denver on a Monday, we were not likely to learn about it until Wednesday at the earliest and, since it was two or three days old, that news story would consist of two to four paragraphs within a collection of “News from Around the Nation” or some such title.

We were informed, even well informed, with a bit of extra effort.

But we were not inundated.

I remember listening to entire baseball games on radio, while reading a book at the same time, without flipping to CNN during commercial breaks — because there was no CNN then, no 24/7 news cycle.

I do remember the introduction to the Lone Ranger on radio and on television: “Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. The Lone Ranger rides again!”

The Lone Ranger rode.

Tucker Carlson did not.

Much less news-saturation stress.

No wonder we call them “the good old days.”

Denny Bonavita is a former editor/publisher at newspapers in DuBois, Brookville, New Bethlehem and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: notniceman9@gmail.com.