Moller, director of the Journalism Program at Brandeis University
(Shooting War, 1989), offers a subtle analysis of how media
coverage of foreign crises and tragedies numbs our ability to care.
Disease, famine, war, and death intrude on our lives daily in the
words and images of television, newspapers, and news magazines.
Genocide in Rwanda, death camps in Bosnia, famine in Somalia all
blend together in an unending deluge of despair. We purportedly
reach a point when we can no longer take it all in or react with
outrage and concern. Thus we reach "compassion fatigue." And
according to some, in response to this fatigue, the media offer us
news coverage that is superficial and formulaic. Moeller, however,
reverses this causality by arguing that compassion fatigue is
actually caused by the media and how they cover foreign crises.
Disasters run together in the mind because they are covered in the
same, stereotypical way: Famine is images of starving children
rather than complex events with myriad causes and possible
responses. The "Americanizing" of tragedy, the use of metaphors
that evoke American experiences and knowledge, simplifies crises,
leaving us no context in which to understand their singular
importance: Whether Bosnia is explained as another Vietnam or
another Munich, we learn little of the historical roots of that
conflict. And the media's sensationalizing of events demands that
the next event be presented in even more horrific and drastic ways.
The public both remains uninterested in what is omitted (no news,
for instance, on the possibility of famine) and becomes stupefied
by the endless suffering that is presented. The media might put
tragedies in historical and cultural context, show us the subtle
dimensions of foreign events. Yet this all requires reporting that
is daring and innovative - the kind of reporting that is too often
missing in contemporary news coverage. With careful scholarship and
nuanced argument, Moeller presents the image of media that have
simply stopped doing their job. (Kirkus Reviews)
From flesh-eating viruses to death camps in Bosnia and massacres in
Rwanda, we are bombarded with media representations of disease,
poverty and genocide. But is our horror at such images turning to
apathy in the face of so much suffering? Susan D. Moeller's book
identifies this syndrome as compassion fatigue, an inevitable
consequence of the media's formulaic coverage of global news.
Moeller warns that the reporting practices of the American media
undermine our ability to understand the world around us. She asks
why international news has become tabloid in style and light on
content - is this a response to audience demands, or does it create
a particular sort of audience, one which has seen too much to care?
Moeller explores how the media have covered the Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse - famine, disease, death and war - during the 1980s
and 1990s. She speaks to industry insiders about the effects of
media mergers, the tyranny of the bottom line, and the
ever-shrinking audience attention span on efforts to both tell and
sell a story. Moeller argues that the media have a special
responsibility to the public which they must fulfil if we are to
avoid multiplying outbreaks of compassio
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