TV Is Draining Our Compassion

I was not moved by the earthquakes in Taiwan or in Turkey. (No pun intended.) Nor was I moved by the JFK Jr. tragedy. Or even the Columbine massacre.

How could I be? I am a product of this TV News Media Run Amok Age. I cannot care anymore. I have been corrupted.

News cameras brought the horrors of Vietnam into our living rooms. It was world-class tragedy, up close and personal, for the first time.

Nowadays, similar horrors are brought into our bedrooms, and what I feel is akin to molestation. As a result, I now suffer from a chronic condition known as ATD: Acute Televisual Desensitization.

I would hazard a guess that long, long ago (maybe pre-1960s), in a galaxy not-so-far away, most tragedies would simply occur. They would occur and then almost everything about that tragedy would be dealt with locally, on what used to be known as a human scale.

The dead would be mourned by those who knew them, one by one.

Sure, there were world wars, calamities and individual dramas that were written about in the newspapers. But events we read about are different. When reading, one relies on the imagination to form a mental picture.

When everything - and I mean everything - is shown with every sight and sound intact, the images should affect us even more.

But the everyday horrific news images no longer affect us because we are inundated with similar pictures day in and day out.

Think Mark Barton, who opened fire on fellow stock traders in Atlanta; the church shootings in Fort Worth, Texas; ad infinitum, ad nauseam. The shocking and the sad has been reduced to cheap, voyeuristic thrills.

How is the average person supposed to deal with endless violent tragedy on the news nearly every day?

I’m talking about “A car chase ends in a gruesome inferno. More at 11.” I’m talking about “A man jumps to his watery death. See it at 6.” And, “An angry husband shoots his wife and three kids, then himself. More after this commercial break.”

In my dictionary, news is defined as “new information.” Tell me, what’s new about yet another disastrous fire, car crash or murder? What purpose does this information really serve, besides ratings?

Maybe I am supposed to feel better about my own problems because at least I wasn’t mauled by the neighbor’s pit bull.

I have a confession to make. I was very moved by the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and her sister in an airplane accident. I was also extremely moved by the shooting deaths at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. But after dozens of news shows and specials with different catchy titles (“Slaughter in the Schoolyard”), how can one be anything other than annoyed and repulsed by the crass, over-done coverage?

I would have been very moved by the earthquake disaster in Turkey too, but the truth is that I am afraid to turn on the news anymore. I am tired of caring about other human beings via my remote control. Getting choked up in my living room doesn’t do much good for anybody.

I may feel compassion, but it is a distant and impotent compassion. I am still a voyeur. At best, I am a compassionate voyeur.

Yes, I mail a check to the Red Cross when a disaster strikes. I pray for the victims. I try in some way to learn from these awful events, to somehow be at least a more aware person.

But mostly these televisual tragedies pile up like so many car wrecks, and I am left uncomfortably numb.