Bad News Minute . . . Learned or Inherited?

When Brad and I started dating 6 years ago, he teased me that my family had a session of "Bad News Minute" every time we got together. He thinks we all have a preoccupation with sharing terrible stories with each other that we heard on the news or from neighbors. The last couple of days we've had some bad news minutes (car broke down, etc.) and Annie has heard us talking about them with our parents, so all morning she's been telling me that she has some bad news to tell me. It generally consists of one of her "friends" (Alabama, Georgia, California, or Utah) being sick. I've decided I think the phrase "I've got some bad news to tell you" is definitely learned, but the preoccupation may be genetic.