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OverviewHailed 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. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Susan D. MoellerPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd Imprint: Routledge Edition: New edition Dimensions: Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 23.40cm Weight: 0.740kg ISBN: 9780415920988ISBN 10: 0415920981 Pages: 400 Publication Date: 26 August 1999 Audience: College/higher education , General/trade , Tertiary & Higher Education , General Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print  This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsIntroduction: Riding with the Four Horsemen, ONE Compassion Fatigue, TWO Covering Pestilence: Sensationalizing Epidemic Disease, THREE Covering Famine: The Famine Formula, FOUR Covering Death: The Americanization of Assassinations, FIVE Covering War: Getting Graphic About Genocide, Conclusion, Notes, Acknowledgments, IndexReviewsMoeller takes a morally complex and tightly interwoven theme--how the media sells disease, famine, war and death--and melds it into a coherent and powerful indictment of exactly how the right photo and words can shape public opinion with often devastating effects on the future.... A book that, despite its scope and density, should be read by the public and media.. - The Press Christchurch, New Zealand """Moeller takes a morally complex and tightly interwoven theme--how the media sells disease, famine, war and death--and melds it into a coherent and powerful indictment of exactly how the right photo and words can shape public opinion with often devastating effects on the future... A book that, despite its scope and density, should be read by the public and media."" -- The Press Christchurch, New Zealand" 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) Moeller takes a morally complex and tightly interwoven theme--how the media sells disease, famine, war and death--and melds it into a coherent and powerful indictment of exactly how the right photo and words can shape public opinion with often devastating effects on the future.... A book that, despite its scope and density, should be read by the public and media.. <br>- The Press Christchurch, New Zealand <br> Author InformationSusan D. Moeller is Director of the Journalism Program and Associate Professor of American Studies at Brandeis University. She has worked as a journalist for national magazines and newspapers and is the author of ShootingWar: Photography and the American Experience of Combat (1989). Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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