Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-372) and index

Compassion fatigue. The practice of journalism and compassion fatique -- Images and compassion fatique -- Covering pestilence : sensationalizing epidemic disease. Mad cows and Englishmen : Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Britain, March 1996 -- The Doomsday disease : Ebola, Zaire, May 1995 -- Covering famine : the famine formula. The archetypal media famine : Ethiopia, fall and winter 1984-1985 -- Just how much of a disaster does a disaster have to be : Sudan and Somalia, 1991-1993 -- Covering death : the Americanization of assassinations. Death in the Indian subcontinent : Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Wednesday, October 31, 1984, & Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, Wednesday, August 17, 1988 -- Death in the Middle East : Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat, Thursday, October 6, 1981 & Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Saturday, November 4, 1995 -- Covering war : getting graphic about genocide. Poison gas, deportation and execution : Iraq's ""Anfal"" campaign against the Kurds, February-August 1998 -- ""Ethnic cleansing"" : the ""death camps"" in Bosnia, August 1992 -- ""Acts of Genocide"" : Rwanda, April-August 1994 -- Conclusion

In her impassioned new book, Compassion Fatigue, Susan Moeller warns that the American media threaten 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 studies of the ""four horsemen of the Apocalypse""--Disease, famine, war and death - Moeller investigate 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