While working on the upcoming media awards for a press forum I co-run, I started thinking there should be a category for the ‘Biggest Media Obsession of 2009’. However, you can’t present an award to the recession or Swine Flu – it can hardly climb on stage, grab a trophy and make a speech.

As I’ve always been employed in journalism and PR, I understand to an extent how the media operates... but that doesn’t prevent the constant parade of media obsessions from being annoying. And we certainly had plenty of media hypes to keep us going in 2009.

Looking back on the year, it kicked off with constant 24/7 coverage about the downturn. And when I say constant, I mean constant. I remember landing in Gatwick from Spain, turning on the TV when I reached Brighton, and discovering magazine programmes that were dissecting such thrilling topics as “couples are falling out with each other because the recession means they don’t have enough money to go to the pub in the evening”. Yawn! The level of daily obsessing about the recession, in all its permutations, increased the likelihood that Britain would wallow in misery for longer than European other countries. After all, who would want to buy a new washing machine or home entertainment system when they were constantly being fed stories about people staying at home and performing “make do and mend” operations on their old things to save a few quid? For a while, every press release I saw used the phrase “...beat the credit crunch”. Overdose! Overdose! Argh!

Then Swine Flu came along in April and presented a handy antidote to the recession (as did Susan Boyle, star of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, who was eventually driven over the edge by the media). Soon we had daily reports about who had caught it, where it was spreading and which countries had stockpiled enough Tamiflu (none, if it had struck as predicted). By the end of 2009, it had become clear that the pandemic hadn’t caught us all within its porky grip... so were those expensive full-page public information advertisements placed in ‘The Telegraph’ by the government really necessary? And now, an investigation is being launched into the role of pharmaceutical companies in creating a ‘false pandemic’ and encouraging the World Health Organisation to upgrade it to pandemic status so governments would stockpile Tamiflu. So that was a storm in a teacup, wasn’t it? But at least it gave us something to think about other than the rising unemployment figures an whether we could afford to go out for pizza.

When Pork Flu started to lose its headline appeal, a leaked report printed in ‘The Telegraph’ in May 2009 blew up the ticking time-bomb of politicians’ expenses to keep us ‘entertained’. MPs were widely rapped over ‘flipping’ their homes and claiming for all manner of outrageous expenses under the parliamentary second home allowance, as well as for ‘employing’ close family members. Subsequently, the speaker and six cabinet members resigned. I’m sure this particular scenario went down well with all those people targeted by the government’s anti benefit fraud campaign, promoted using expensive TV adverts.

May also brought the tabloid dissection of the break-up of Katie Price and Peter Andre. A real doggie’s dinner was made of every movement performed by Katie and Peter – from her visiting Ibiza in scanty clothes (ooh a glamour model in a clingy gold dress, err, shock horror) and his appearances on Hove seafront with the kids. OK, so Katie fuelled the media frenzy but papers wouldn’t fall over themselves to print this material if nobody was interested in reading it. Now would they?

With the end of 2009 approaching, the already obsessed-about topic of climate change came into real focus, with a fixation on the Copenhagen Summit, taking place on December 7-18. Of course, the heads of state couldn’t reach agreement and let out as much hot air as an over-strained power plant. The coal-consuming tendencies of developing economies, especially India (a country that has become the latest media hype, thanks to ‘Slumdog Millionaire’) were of particular concern to other delegates. And, boy, didn’t we hear about it.

If that wasn’t enough about the climate to make us feel carboned-out, the media soon moved on to snow – an obsession that continued until mid-January 2010. OK so the ‘Big Freeze’ brought Britain to its knees but the constant coverage started to turn a tad irritating after a while. When watching the news, did we really need to see all those badly-composed snowy photos taken by viewers of local TV channels? I saw a report the other day about a centimetre of wet snow falling in Brighton but not settling... are we now so terrified of the white stuff that any sighting of a few snowflakes has become news?

I wonder what the imminent 11 months of this year will bring. The obsession with India is still raging (I bet the Indian tourist board loves it) and the possibility of a general election will, of course, result in lots of over-zealous reporting. Now that we’ve got social media (extensively hyped by the traditional media) to ‘force feed’ us news and opinion, and blogs as well, it’s hard to stem the flow. But it’s always an option when one’s saturation level has been reached: put down the newspaper, close Twitter and hit the power switch on the telly. Sometimes, the media just needs turning off for a while.