Comparative Analysis of Compassion Fatigue

Comparative Analysis of Compassion Fatigue

Susan D. Moeller’s book Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, investigates the way over-simplification, sensationalism and Americanization of international stories have dulled our response to even the most troubling events in the news. Her primary argument regards the methods, causes and effects of the media’s preoccupation with entertaining and tear-jerking its audience rather than informing them. It is this tear- jerking that supposedly leads to the compassion fatigue induced in Americans in consideration of their apathy for world events. While Moeller makes a valid argument for her case against the media and its adverse effects that it induces on the American public, she fails to realize in her argument, the inherent stance of what the American public’s views are and how the media must respond to those views in order to remain in business.

According to Moeller, the compassion fatigue that is associated with being induced by the media is a result of the media’s “rote journalism and looking-over- you shoulder reporting. (Moeller, 32)” Moeller states that because the media doesn’t pay much attention to the events that occur in the world, Americans aren’t interested. In order to make those stories interesting with the lack of in depth coverage, journalists are forced to sensationalize them. With this in mind, the media repeatedly sensationalizes story after story. Americans are constantly exposed to sensationalistic coverage of disease that they eventually become fatigued to the point where they finally stop caring: “But much of journalism is repetitious... crime stories, scandals, budget reports and even full blown crises that sound alike… Voila. Compassion fatigue.”

Moeller’s argument begins to parallel Michael Moore’s argument in Bowling for Columbine, that American’s are affected by the fear that is instilled in them by the media: “Sensationalism, formulaic coverage…hallmarks of the media’s coverage.” Where Moore argues that the media is responsible for instilling fear in Americans, he is also able to show how the media affects the American public unlike Moeller. That being said is not a statement against Moeller’s argument but a statement about her lack of being thorough in her argument. Because of the media’s coverage of violent, sensationalistic issues, Moore is able to show how Americans are scared: They live in gated communities and lock their doors at night. They sleep with loaded guns under their pillows because only a firearm at-ready gives them a sense of security. Fear makes people jumpy and apprehensive, and more apt to resort to violence to protect their selves. And there's no cure for it. It is a societal ill that is perpetuated by the evening news and reality TV shows like Cops.

Getting back to Moeller’s argument, she does not broaden her argument to include any accommodations for counterarguments as to why Americans are induced with compassion fatigue. So why don’t Americans care? The even more pressing question to the American media is: How to get the vast majority of Americans to care? To pay attention? To read? To affect change and demand accountability from bumbling spoon-fed leaders who count on voter apathy and force-fed ignorance to cram through their environmental rollbacks and homophobic laws and draconian Patriot Acts? Where Moeller doesn’t place the blame is on the mentality of the American public and its position in world- society. In short, as the theory goes, most Americans don't give a damn because they’re on top, they own everything, they have more nukes than anyone and they’re never the ones getting invaded. It's they’re unofficial motto: America: We Don't Have to Care

When referring to the American public, Moeller forgets that she is referring to a predominantly white society whose apathy for foreign culture began six hundred years ago when the first “Americans” infiltrated tribes of indigenous people in New England, wiping them out and putting them in reserves a few centuries later. This is also the same society that enslaved human beings of another race and still denied them equal rights all but 30 years ago. Given America’s history, it would obviously have to take something extremely sensationalistic or Americanized to get Americans to care. If it is not worth the interest of the Americans, then it is not worth their money and that does not exclude the American media and its coverage of events.

Moeller however, does not provide justification that the people are induced with compassion fatigue as a result of the media’s