Why Does the Media Give Up On a Story When It Does?
Susan Moeller in Compassion Fatigue claims that the affliction is the result of how the media handle crisis coverage. They inundate us with stories of tragedies until they begin to notice the first signs that the short attention span of the public is up
and then they can it. If there was a support group for compassion fatigue, I’d be the first up at the podium saying: My name is Stefan Schussler, and I am fed up.
Whether it’s tsunamis or hurricanes or war or disease, the media bombard with the story constantly. Over and over again we see images of news men like Anderson Cooper putting themselves in the stories, and every possible angle is covered. 24 hours a day we can’t turn the channel without seeing coverage. We send what aide we can, and we still see that the problems aren’t solved, until the stories stop. We give ourselves a congratulatory pat on the back, and pretend like the problems are over, but as Moeller points out, by the time the crisis has become such that our media cover it, it is too late, and what money we do send is nothing but a bandage, and we have all seen a bandage after a day or two. It loses it adhesiveness, the edges become black from dirt and dust and dead skin, and by the third day it fall right off, exposing the wound.
The British Red Cross released a report on the coverage of the war between Israel and Lebanon over the summer. It found that stories about the death toll outnumbered stories on humanitarian aid by a ratio of 18 to 1. It also found that most of the coverage attempted to politicize the problem. It found that humanitarian organizations face a challenge in securing coverage of ‘forgotten emergencies’ where there's little obvious political or economic interest outside the region. For example, Myanmar and Sri Lanka generated less than 20 percent of the number of articles devoted to Lebanon.
This shows that we tend to only support causes that receive rampant coverage, while we forget about the problems that seemed oh so prevalent before this story broke.
Another problem with crisis reporting is that it often causes the audience to forget about problems in their own backyard. Poverty, and lack of services afflicts many Canadians, but we tend to ignore these since we hear so little about them. Only when a story like the water crisis in Kashechewan break do we realize that any problems exist, but even that is quickly forgotten, especially since, only a month later, the tsunami hit southeast Asia. When these stories disappear from the media, we tend to believe that it has all been resolved and that we can continue to believe the illusion that Canada is the best place to live in the world.
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- Published:
- Mar 19 2007 / 7:01 AM
- Author:
- Stefan Schussler
- Category:
- Media
- Tags:
- journalism, media, news, sensationalism
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