There’s been another assassination
T.V. cameras moving in.
To shoot the bloodstains on the pavement
And get them on the News at Ten.
Will he live or will he die, before we go on the air?
Yes, the networks are all there, in the name of Entertainment.
-The Kinks (Raymond Douglas Davies): “Entertainment”
Yes. I bet we’ve all seen that special glint in the eye of the news anchor when a big tragic event happens. They seem jealous that is isn’t happening HERE.
ON 9/11 I was at my part time job.
One guy was dancing around, nearly peeing himself with excitment. He was shouting, “This is just like a movie!”
My husband was suited up waiting for a military flight to the Pentagon to do rescues, at that moment.
I was so angry I got in the face of this 6’4" a**hole and shouted, “It’s NOTHING like a movie! People are dying at this very moment! Stop acting like this is a carnival!”
He shut up and went back to his office.
The next day, he came into my office and apologized.
In the old days, it was gossiping over the garden fence or at the barber shop, while doing the laundry down at the river, whatever. Nowadays we get it on the TV and there are those who need to spread it around to as many people as soon as possible. It is no different than gossip, and some people are just more into it than others. There is probably something specific that could be identified about such personalities if they where psychologically evaluated. They get off on it, yes. All gossips get off on talking about others or even sharing their own drama. And there are all kinds of levels of gossips; some are consummate gossips, some more light weight gossips.
“We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld
I think the entertainment value of many news events is that nobody knows how they are going to end and there is usually enough time to figuratively “place your bet” on the outcome. Whenever we go to war, we start sounding like the so-called experts and call-in fans on an NFL pre-game show.
I dunno. I felt a surge of combined relief and I guess something like triumph when the guy was found in the boat. Hundreds of thousands of people were frozen with fear, why wouldn’t we feel an intense emotion in sympathy with them?
On 9-11 I felt like someone punched me in the stomach. I felt it as an enormous unbelievable grief and calamity. I heard it on the radio, and didn’t watch any footage of it for ten years. And I was 3000 miles away and knew no one who had any direct contact with it.
On the other hand I kind of adore giant natural disasters. Couldn’t watch enough Japanese tsunami footage.
I definitely felt something like “excitement” on that day. I think when I took my first step outside after the towers fell and I saw all the smoke in the sky, my first thought was “And so it begins…”
It wasn’t the kind of excitement that one feels when they win the lottery. But adrenaline kinda feels good as it courses through you. I think I ran all the way to the hospital (to give blood), I was so pumped.
I can sort of relate to this feeling. This is not exactly what I was referring to in the OP, though. I’m talking about those who can hardly contain their glee that there is another situation to demonstrate how much they care.
Recreational Caring.
RC.
mmm
I wouldn’t say I get off on it but I find it very interesting. I like to study things like the Holocaust or the Nan-king massacre, or any run of the mill torture stories that happened throughout history. I also am fascinated by the prison shows on TV and stories that are taking place in North Korea.
Although, I like a feel good story as much as the next person, the one thing you can say about tragedy is that it’s real. If anything, people try to withhold information to shelter the others from pain rather than exaggerate the circumstances of a certain situation.
I think that my interest stems from empathy. I’d like to help if I could. It’s better to know about the craziness taking place in the world than not know.
Empathy is a valid interest in observing tragedy, I agree. I do want to point out that your statement " the one thing you can say about tragedy is that it’s real" doesn’t - in a quantifiable.verifiable/factual sense factor in the method and content of delivery by The Media.
To say “the news” in another way: it’s not a WYSIWYG.
picunurse: I’m giving you a big ole high-5! Awesome! 
Empathy is a valid interest in observing tragedy, I agree. I do want to point out that your statement " the one thing you can say about tragedy is that it’s real" doesn’t - in a quantifiable/verifiable/factual sense factor in the method and content of delivery by The Media.
To say “the news” in another way: it’s not a WYSIWYG.
picunurse: I’m giving you a big ole high-5! Awesome!
From my little bit of edumakayshun, I learned that “going to war” means money in the government coffers. War is Big Business…
Ah, the game called Gossip! I learned it in Girl Scouts (back in the Dark Ages, during the early eras of the Original Social Media). I’m wagering we’ve all played it? You know the result: how different the returning statement is from the original statement.
Is this The News?
When I was in my clinical depression in my teen years I loved reading Holocaust stories and horror stories and disasters.
A couple of people have outright accused me of wishing to harm other people. (One was a schizophrenic who had psychotic episodes about demons and the other was an uber-Christian.) That was not at all why I was reading about those subjects.
I read about them because I envied the survivors who fought against them, and they had proven that they were strong enough to overcome the worst. I envied that their enemies were external forces, whereas my worst enemy was in my own brain. When I read those stories, I can pretend I’m on the good side and that my enemies are separate entities who have the shallow morality of comic book villains. Life would be so much easier.
That said, I recognize there’s a big difference between “the world as I want it to be” and “the world that really is”. I recognize that people have paid unbearable prices for those tragedies and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
I think most people who are heavily invested with the Boston Marathon bombing (and who weren’t directly affected) either identified with the victims/survivors’ losses or reacted out of fear. Few, in comparison, “got off” on the bombing.
I have a FB friend that is really into kids with cancer. She posts (reposts, really) links with pictures of ill kids whose parents are asking for prayers and support, etc. Usually, these kids are pictured in a hospital bed, or sleeping, or bald and playing a video game, or with some IV tubing. Usually the posts are from the parents and are asking ‘prayer warriors’ to pray for them, etc.
All that support stuff is nice, but my friend doesn’t have kids or cancer, or any experience with kids or cancer, or work in any field related to kids or cancer. She’s not even particularly religious. I guess she just has somehow linked into a prayer or kid or cancer group or something.
I admire that she hates that kids get cancer, but the whole thing is just kind of strange and voyeuristic to me.
It engages the fight/flight response, which gives a lot of external stimulation, energy, and emotion to an otherwise “dead” existence. People often use anger to get this charge, and there’s also the grief process when something Big happens, which also involves anger. So, overcharged in every way. Feeling feelings.
It provides enough external presence to get outside internal neurosis, and live both in the present (which feels really good) and outside oneself (which feels really good).
As monstro points out, it brings us all closer together, it increases our momentary/present cultural literacy, and makes us feel as one. Which is a big stroke to the self-esteem. Which feels really good.
It’s not just horrific disaster. Paul Christoforo’s drama evoked the same response, and CNN made boku milking the emotional immediacy of the Carnival cruise ship. Schadenfreude is a basic physical-chemical response.
Before it possibly gets yanked off of youtube, since we’re discussing the media and government, I highly recommend the SIRIUS documentary.
I lost my five minute edit window, oops!
Of particular note, pay attention to frames 1:19:12 through 1:23:34, germane to the topic!
What I see is that most of us are struggling through gray, mushy, hopelessly entangled lives where we’re never really sure how much good we’re able to accomplish or how much evil we can defeat. Maybe it’s human nature, or maybe it’s something impressed upon us by our culture, but we like to think that each of us is the hero of the story. Every story needs a conflict, and our daily conflicts of coworkers and family just don’t do it.
Then along comes something like 9/11 or the Boston bombing, and it’s undeniably real, there is without a doubt a villain (and it’s not us), and we can do something to help (donate blood or money, take strangers into our homes, commiserate with others). We get the hormone dumps that WhyNot mentions. We strengthen our emotional ties to others. And, for a while, all the petty bullshit drops away.
I feel compelled to answer this because a coworker called me out last week. On Friday, when they had locked down Boston and were looking for the suspect, I was incredibly excited and watching the news attentively to see how things unfolded. She said “Why are you acting so happy about this? This is a tragedy.” I remarked that the tragedy happened on Monday, now they were closing in on the suspect and this part was exciting.
It particularly got under my skin because I’m an EMT, and I’ve actually devoted a good bit of my free time of being trained on how to help people, and then going in there and actually doing my part to make things better. I did not like this woman criticizing my mindset when I actually try to go out and save people, which is more than she does.
Thing is, when you’re zooming down the road, lights flashing and sirens wailing, there’s an element of excitement there. You don’t know what’s going to happen next, but you know that whatever does happen will be of significance. And I think any time that you’re in the middle of a moment that really matters in some large scale way, it’s exciting.