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

Susan D. Moeller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 23, 1998

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, 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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Compassion fatigue"?the dulled public sensitivity toward crisis?isn't inevitable, asserts Moeller, director of the journalism program at Brandeis. But formulaic and sensationalistic news coverage promotes it, she claims. In four worthy but somewhat belabored case studies, Moeller analyzes major American media coverage of recent crises, such as the Ebola virus, Ethiopian famine, the assassinations of Sadat and Rabin, and "death camps" in Bosnia. In these stories she found certain things were emphasized, others ignored: coverage of sensational disease, she notes, obscures more ordinary killers; images of starving children overshadow political causes for famine (and famines without photo opportunities are often ignored); the "Americanization" of assassination emphasizes that killers are crazy, rather than politically motivated; and lack of a simple heroes-and-villains story line obscured the Kurdish tragedy. The solution, she argues in an earnest but pollyannaish conclusion, is for the media to invest in international coverage, aiming for nuance and quality over sensationalism. More valuable for its analysis of what's wrong than on how to make it right, Moeller's book could have been made more helpful still through a brief comparison with media in other countries.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Moeller's patient dissection of media is a penetrating analysis, concluding that after more and more death and war, disease and worse, consumers just get tire of caring. Change is needed. -- Morton Times-News
...thought-provoking...an important resource for journalism schools... -- The Evening Post
[Moeller] provides challenging detail and analysis [and] raises uncomfortable truths in a readable, provocative manner. -- The Australian
Compassion Fatigue is a reportorial and moral success... [Moeller] demonstrates, in great detail and with tremendous discernment, how [our] self-absorption has served as a prophylactic against understanding. -- National Post
Criticism of the press for its foreign coverage is hardly novel, but in this unrelenting, uncompromising book, Moeller manages to cast a fresh, unwavering eye on the problem...That Moeller's suggestions probably will not be acted upon should not diminish the accomplishment of this impressive book. -- Columbia Journalism Review
Her exhaustive analysis of coverage is a great accomplishment, as is her own retelling of these events. She helps us understand how the media shape our view of the world--and thus shape future events. -- Philadelphia Inquirer
With careful scholarship and nuanced argument, Moeller presents the image of media that have simply stopped doing their job. -- Kirkus Reviews
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
The challenging premise of this well-written book will be of interest to both students and consumers of the media. -- Library Journal
[A] penetrating analysis of an aspect of current media superficiality... -- Booklist
Compassion Fatigue excels in its careful dissection of the institutional, philosophical, and logistical obstacles that prevent the media from effectively monitoring this planet. -- Charlotte Observer
A fascinating exploration of how crisis reporting impacts public opinion and how this affects future coverage. -- William Small, former president of NBC News and United Press International, professor emeritus at Fordham University
Compassion Fatigue is a calm but unflinching look at some of the most desperate stories on the planet. Susan Moeller has engaged the press in exactly the right terms: formulaic performance, sentimentality, missing context, not fighting hard enough to do a story. When these charges are backed up fairly (as they are in Compassion Fatigue) the press will listen. Eventually. -- Thomas C. Leonard, Assoc. Dean, Graduate School of Journalism University of California, Berkeley
For graduate, research, and professional collections. -- Choice
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. -- Scott Armstrong, former Washington Post reporter and co-author with Bob Woodward of The Brethren, Inside the Supreme Court

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (September 23, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415920973
• ISBN-13: 978-0415920971
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,398,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good read, but cliche conclusions, January 15, 2001

By 

Peter E. Harrell - See all my reviews

This review is from: Compassion Fatigue : How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death (Paperback)

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.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Perfect Holiday Gift, December 7, 1998

By 

James C. Costa (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death (Hardcover)

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.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Profoundly important and a good read to boot., February 9, 1999

By 

[e-mail] - See all my reviews

This review is from: Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death (Hardcover)

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.