First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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

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