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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 320
EAN num: 9780415920988
ISBN number: 0415920981
Label: Routledge
Manufacturer: Routledge
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 400
Printing Date: 1999-08
Publishing house: Routledge
Sale Popularity Level: 830055
Studio: Routledge
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From outbreaks of the flesh eating viruses Ebola and Strep A, to death camps in Bosnia and massacres in Rwanda, the media seem to careen from one trauma to another, in a breathless tour of poverty, disease and death. First we're horrified, but each time they turn up the pitch, show us one image more hideous than the next, it gets harder and harder to feel. Meet compassion fatigue--a modern syndrome, Susan Moeller argues, that results from formulaic media coverage, sensationalized language and overly Americanized metaphors.
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 as 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.
Throughout, we hear from industry insiders who tell of the chilling effect of the mega- media mergers, the tyranny of the bottom-line hunt for profits, and the decline of the American attention span as they struggle to both tell and sell a story. But Moeller is insistent that the media need not, and should not, be run like any other business. The media have a special responsibility to the public, and when they abdicate this responsibility and the public lapses into a compassion fatigue stupor, we become a public at great danger to ourselves.
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Rated by buyers 
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"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 very 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 discusion 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, while the other could barely get something less than a one page obituary (even here mostly devoted to how many dignitaries and personalities came to pay their final respects) in TIME magazine. That one observation says a lot about not only the morals and values of the media, but even more about those of us viewers.
The motto of the media should be changed to reflect the sorry state of our times, and should now be: all the news that's (un)fit to print.
Rated by buyers 
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Moeller divides her book into six sections; an introduction, a section on media coverage of disease, a chapter on media coverage of famine, a chapter on coverage of assassinations, a chapter on coverage of genocide, and a conclusion. Each section if filled with case studies and alternately amusing and horrifying anecdotes; she recounts, for example, that the editor of one Boston paper said that "the distance from Boston common divided by the number of bodies" decides which stories make the final cut. The book makes a great read (especially relative to the bulk of academic writing), and you'll certainly pick up little tidbits you can later cite in conversations about current events.
The conclusions Moeller draws, however, are cliché. What do you know, the media disproportionately focuses on the US, and most of what we see of Africa and the Middle East is tragedy, so we get a skewed picture. And the media sensationalize everything, and are fond of shallow, sound-bite explanations of complex tragedies. Who would have guessed any of this without reading the book? I also find her conclusions somewhat contradictory; she argues both that excessive coverage of disasters leads to a hardening of the public's sympathies AND that the media need to increase coverage of foreign tragedies. I think she's arguing that the type of coverage needs to be changes - fewer pictures of starving children, more hard-boiled analysis, but her conclusion is so brief she doesn't elaborate much. So while you will probably enjoy the book, and love the stories, I doubt that when you have finished you will feel that you have a better understanding of the American media.
Rated by buyers -
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.
Rated by buyers -
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.
Rated by buyers -
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
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