Do We Really Care?

‘Compassion Fatigue’ is the popular concept that suggests that the compassion felt for victims of certain misfortunes (wars, famines, natural disasters, etc.) reduces over time as the media saturates the story to such an extent whereby the audience becomes numb to the emotional impact that these stories would have held at an earlier date.

This notion fosters the media’s infatuation with crisis journalism, which is used in an attempt to capture an audience believed to hold acutely short attention spans and little interest in international events with little or no impact on their own lives. News items, therefore, must be dramatic and this leads to sensationalistic and simplistic stories. As a result of the dramatisation process, each story must be seen to be more sensational than the last. A greater number of deaths, explosions, homes destroyed and ever more devastating pictures must follow to keep an audience tuned in. The spectre of ‘compassion fatigue’ thus acts as an impetus for the selection criteria of stories deemed newsworthy. This means that even if the event is not yet over news coverage of the story might come to an end prematurely if it is believed that story has become boring for an increasingly ADD-ridden public.

‘Compassion Fatigue’ presupposes that the public holds a short attention span. That certain stories may elicit a strong emotional response from the public despite the passage of time is argued by organisations such as Oxfam who have claimed that donations to their organisation in the aftermath of certain crisis have not slowed down as a result of the saturation of media images of suffering.

The reality is surely to be found somewhere in the middle. Many people will suffer from 'Compassion Fatigue' but not everyone. Some prefer to focus on issues closer to home, while others are distracted by abuses they see as more brutal that are taking place abroad. Ultimately, we must talk about degrees of compassion as to feel nothing for those that you see suffering greatly would truly make you nothing more than a machine.