Recent terrible events in Ukraine demonstrate the role and purpose of factual TV is growing increasingly important.

I’m a TV obsessive. There’s a very blurred line between my work and home life as both are saturated with telly and I’ll go on consuming it until my right eye starts to twitch. I swallow up everything from breakfast news to Apple TV, from Netflix to Disney+. I just engrossed myself in The Tinder Swindler, ruminating on who the hell would go to Bulgaria on a first date.

I Google new literary adaptations in the works, read the books and then marvel – or otherwise – at the producer’s vision of the characters and plot in comparison with my own. You could say it’s a proper passion. You also could say that I like to escape reality.

Perhaps my deep hunger for content comes from growing up in Belarus in the old USSR, where we only had three state channels, two of them Russian. Maybe I’m catching up on lost time.

I remember the first airing of the Academy Awards when I was a teenager, staying up all night, wide-eyed. The first season of Sex & The City also blew my mind. I still remember the thrilling moment I finally heard Carrie and the girls’ real voices when I left Belarus for the first time.

This terrible period that our Ukrainian brothers and sisters are enduring and the shame and horror experienced by those of us opposed to war and who have histories and families in Russia and Belarus has, at its root, a deeply toxic cocktail of opinion, propaganda and false perception. It’s divisive, potent and now terrifyingly dangerous.

The reality we all face as we watch this horrifying act of violence roll out is extremely painful and something that I’m struggling to process.

As professionals in the content industry, it’s our duty to deliver as much objectivity to our audiences as possible, to be balanced and neutral in our presentation of history and current affairs. This not only educates and enlightens us but helps us not to repeat the mistakes of the past. It’s vital to global sense-making. But as we have seen, people will peddle opinions and perceptions as facts and reality if it helps them to achieve their own ends.

Against the backdrop of what is unfolding in Ukraine, the role and purpose of factual TV grows ever more pertinent. The genre has a vital role to play in helping us to make sense of the world – especially at a time when the world frankly makes no sense at all.

My passion for content first drove me to work in production in Serbia, then to the UK, where I’ve worked in distribution for the past six years, across all genres and now in factual programming. What’s come into sharp focus for me now is how much the genre has influenced and informed my life, helping me to understand the world and pursue a path that feels more meaningful.

So perhaps my obsession with content is not escapism after all, but a desire to immerse myself in facts in order to reach as balanced an understanding as possible of the ever-changing world around us.

Events may feel new to us, but history shows us that everything has, to some degree, happened before. We like to think of ourselves as unique but, if you look below the surface, you’ll find stories that broaden your horizons, nurture your development as a human being and, most importantly, provide some answers and context to our current problems.

I know, from growing up in a media world starved of objectivity and facts, that the privilege and power we have to ensure humanity, compassion and balance runs through the stories we tell and sell has never been more vital.