Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death

by Susan D. Moeller and D Moeller Susan

Book Overview

In her impassioned new book, Compassion Fatigue, Moeller 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,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415920973
• ISBN13: 9780415920971
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 398 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Exposes the Media's Voyeuristic, Shock And Awe Tendencies

"At breakfast and at dinner, we can sharpen our own appetites with a plentiful dose of the pornography of war, genocide, destitution and disease." So says one of the first lines in introduction to Compassion Fatigue. With that statement as simultaneously an opener and a teaser of the things to come, Professor Moeller takes the reader on a guided tour of the presentation and commodification of human tragedy and suffering. Compassion Fatigue tells you the how and the why behind what makes the nightly news, and also reveals why a great many other things do not make the news. While mostly a critique of US based media and journalism, it does reveal the gradual trend towards the 'One World' view of things and events that has come to typify reporting of any sort. Without intending to do so, the book does much to demonstrate that the media, always locked in competition with other forms of 'programming' for our attention, has resorted to marketing information- current events, as a form of entertainment. In place of in-depth, investigative journalism, we now have soundbites featuring 'talking heads', and the cuter or more obscene the personality (and increasingly both), the better. Each of the so-called 'Four Horsemen'- war, disease, famine and death, are presented and profiled in turn, with detailed discussion about the mechanics behind their delivery to readers and viewers. This book differs from most critiques of the media because it tells the narrative with the assistance of journalists themselves, in the words of the journalists. Many people in the media know what they are doing is not only questionable, but in some cases, flat out wrong. However, marketability (how well something will go over with viewers) matters more than anything else. Marketability makes for high ratings, and high ratings in turn makes for fat profits for the parent company. Ergo, the trend towards to self-interested and self-centered journalism, and the tendency to feature celebrity involvement with current events. The latter trend is most pernicious, because it is not necessarily the event, but what they think of it that matters most, as being able to get people's attention is the most important thing, not what's really going on in the world. This in turn is both related to and feeds into the Body Count Syndrome, whereby each tragedy or documented depravity has to be bigger and obscence than the one before it, once again, to get our attention. Although the book was a bit wearying at points (mostly because of the nine point font of the text), overall the content was top-notch. I especially liked the final chapter, where Professor Moeller compared and contrasted the funerals of Princess Diana and Mother Theresa, both of whom died at the same time. One was tabloid fodder, and the other dedicated her life to bringing a little joy to impoverished and suffering masses of humanity. Yet even in death, one managed to monopolize nearly all media attention for a month,

Profoundly important and a good read to boot.

Susan Moeller gets right to the heart of the weaknesses of how the American media covers foreign news and the way the American audience percieves it. But she doesn't just paint a picture of the problems -she spells out some constructive and doable means to fix them. As a journalist myself, I recommended this book to all of my peers -both in the industry and out of it.

The Perfect Holiday Gift

Tired of giving gifts that don't mean anything? Then this book is the perfect gift to give to someone you care about. This book teaches us that we need to look closely at what is being fed to us daily in newspapers, TV, and radio. Ms. Moeller forces us to look at how Americans wants their news served to us so we can tolerate it instead of tasting it and truly understanding the complexities. I applaud her bravery in criticizing the mainstream press which will certainly not be interested in reviewing or having her on as a guest. If you care about the world buy this book and give it to as many friends as you can.

This is a very important book.

Criticism of the American press -- broadcast and print -- for its foreign coverage is hardly new but Professor Moeller does a masterful job of exposing the causes and the result of this failure. Her work should open the public's eyes, and, indeed, those of the press itself, to the danger to our democracy if remedy is not forthcoming. -Walter Cronkite

Compassion Fatigue demystifies the editorial formulas which

Compassion Fatigue demystifies the editorial formulas which lead to homogenized, Americanized and unconscionably-thin international news coverage. In this important work, Susan Moeller holds American news moguls, editors, journalists and their audiences accountable for failing to overcome public apathy and to assume the unprofitable responsibility to accurately report and measure the human significance of epidemic, assassination, massacre and famine. Submitted by: Former Washington Post reporter Scott Armstrong, the founder of the National Security Archive and co-author with Bob Woodward of The Brethren.