Abstract

Media starvation diet

The article presents information about the book "Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death," by Susan D. Moeller. In 1984-85 famine was not the last in Africa. Hunger continued to hit the continent again and again, along with outbreaks of disease and wars, reaching one terrible culmination in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, in which an estimated 800,000 people died. Moeller's book focuses on the threat to intelligent coverage of foreign news. It is not so much a lack of interest as it is a concentration of ownership that is profit-driven. Moeller points out that the newsweeklies sell fewer newsstand copies when they do foreign events. Among Time's ten worst selling cover stories since 1980 are features on Bosnia and Somalia. So she partly exonerates the media.