feature article

Suffering as a Commodity of the Media

By Tyler Steele

When sitting down to watch the evening news, we subconsciously believe we are gaining a comprehensive understanding of what is occurring on a local and international level. Our hope is that the information we receive is unbiased, accurate and portrays a clear picture of reality.

Unfortunately, writes media researcher William Gamson, “all the trends seem to be in the wrong direction—toward more and more messages, from fewer and bigger producers, saying less and less.” With the majority of media owned by fewer and fewer corporations, audience ability to ‘see’ the world, in all its richness of people and perspective, becomes limited. Instead, it seems, media portray a world primarily filled with violence and suffering.

Media shape the way we perceive the outside world and the suffering of others during international conflicts. Especially through television, we become aware of the suffering of distant others. We see pictures of genocide, victims of terrorist bombings, and other massacres, but in a way that makes it seem ‘unreal’ and distant. In an article for Media, Culture & Society, B. Hoijer writes that the media tend to have an “anesthetic effect” and desensitize audiences. Human suffering is packaged and “commodified by the media”… “the audience become passive spectators of distant death and pain without any moral commitment.” Instead of providing the audience with the information needed to be compassionate citizens, the media portray a constant flow of indistinct suffering in the world ‘out there’. Viewers are left overwhelmed and fatigued.

The media also provide a limited view of conflict, neglecting coverage before and after violence occurs. Peter Jakobsen writes in the Journal of Peace Research that media fail to take an interest in rising tensions, or the pre-violence phase, although it is a critical time when violent conflict might be prevented through international intervention or mediation. Even when media do cover the violence-phase of conflicts, Jakobsen argues, they do so in only a limited way. “Most violent conflicts are not covered at all,” he writes. The reason for this is that media coverage is not decided by humanitarian impact. Rather, coverage tends to depend on Western interests – and those interests favor a certain view of the world. Pamela Shoemaker and Stephen Reese, in their book Theories of Influence on Mass Media Content, suggest that the limited, mainstream media view of a violent world perpetuates a particular set of social norms or ideology favored by power elites. While no one would say that violence and suffering is a good thing, the media packaging of it, in simple terms, is profitable.