In view of what happened at the nation’s capitol on January 6th, there’s an important caution – and concept – concerning what you should do when something like this dominates the news.

A lot of stations in some formats (like A/C or Contemporary Christian Music, or any music format, actually) choose to simply not talk about it.  The danger here is coming across like an ostrich with your head stuck in the sand, like you don’t even know about what happened.  This is not something I recommend, although it is better than alienating your audience by sounding off with an opinion that could severely damage your listenership.

The 2nd – and better – way to handle it is to take credit for NOT talking about it.  A simple statement like “We’ve all seen what’s in the news right now, but just know that this morning when you’re taking the kids to school, we’re NOT going to be talking about that.”  (Same for “picking up the kids” in the afternoon, or “running errands today.”)

You get credit in the mind of the listener for (1) being aware of it, even though you’re not talking about it, and (2) co-parenting, in a way, or at least being someone who’s not going to force the listener to discuss something with their kids that they might not want to discuss yet.

Believe me, this works.  It builds TRUST, a huge factor that you should want in your favor.