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)
Hailed as a 'great accomplishment' by the
Philadelphia Inquirer, Susan Moeller's
Compassion Fatigue warns that the American media threatens our ability to understand the world around us. Why do the media cover the world in the way that they do? Are they simply following the marketplace demand for tabloid-style international news? Or are they creating an audience that has seen too much - or too little - to care? Through a series of case studies of the 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' - disease, famine, death and war - Moeller investigates how newspapers, newsmagazines and television have covered international crises over the last two decades, identifying the ruts into which the media have fallen and revealing why.
eBook available with sample pages: 0203900359
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