Compassion Fatigue

We used to sponsor a little girl in Indonesia called Rani. Through a registered and reputable charity we would send money that was designed to assist with her education and general well-being. Sometimes we would exchange letters, cards and photos, which allowed our daughter Ruby to develop a rapport with Rani (they are about the same age) and hopefully it also gave Ruby some kind of perspective that the life she is living here in Australia is pretty damn good.
Then out of the blue one day we got a letter from the charity saying Rani’s family no longer wished to be a part of the program. The charity had selected a new recipient for us, but it didn’t feel right. We had invested more than money in Rani; we had established some kind of relationship, and in a world where there are so many people in need, she was somebody we could help in a practical, tangible way.
I’m sure the new kid was equally deserving (although he was a boy and therefore less likely to get letters from Ruby) but I couldn’t seem to transfer my compassion from one kid to another that easily. Instead we decided to channel our monthly contribution into a general community fund rather than start the process of getting to know a new child.
It was easier, but the whole incident has highlighted for me a modern phenomenon known as ‘compassion fatigue’ – a feeling of being overwhelmed by the suffering in the world and powerless to do anything about it.
As someone who has worked in the media off-and-on for 15 years, sometimes I just have to tune it out because it makes me depressed. News media thrives on adversity and every day we are bombarded with images and stories of people struggling against natural and man-made disasters. The cumulative effect is that our emotional response is becoming increasingly dulled.
The 24-hour news cycle has a voracious appetite; survivors of today’s disaster are soon forgotten, superseded by others in more dire circumstances.
I remember as a young Media Studies student learning about the ‘news hierarchy’ whereby those closest to us, both geographically and culturally, matter more in terms of their newsworthiness. (This is why coverage of floods in Queensland and earthquakes in Christchurch will far outweigh something like the earthquake in Haiti a year earlier which killed 300,000 and left a million people homeless – Haitians are “not like us”.)
In some news organisations there is a culture where tragedy is celebrated. A journo who was working at The Daily Telegraph when Martin Bryant went on his killing spree at Port Arthur once told me there was a cheer every time the body count went up (and therefore the size and significance of the story).
It’s not quite like that at The Echo, where we do try and celebrate the good things that people are doing in our local community, but I wish I could do more and care more and just help a little girl in Indonesia called Rani.