Not desensitized, but other emotions. The way the media jumps from one tragedy to the next for the story of the day is sometimes startling. I hate when they report the number of Americans killed - as if the event is meaningless otherwise. Disgust when the “tragedy” is media generated. And sometimes I am just overwhelmed and have to turn off the news. I don’t believe the world and it’s news is any worse than it ever was - murder, mayhem, chaos - all historical. The difference now is communication. We see it live, no matter where in the world it happens.

The older I get the harder it is to hear about the misfortune of others. I have become somewhat of a cry baby. Tears ready to flow with the biggest and smallest happenings, even the good news makes me cry. So months ago I decided to stop being a news junky. I can’t handle it anymore.

Never… I have felt others pain since I was a child. Always considered overly sensitive and moody, I’ve learned more about why I was that way. I would never boldly claim to possess some special gift of empathy. I believe that the majority of human beings possess empathy. I only know that there have been times when I’ve had to stop listening to the news because I was feeling physical pain. The early days after 9/11 were especially hard. I didn’t personally know anyone effected and I live in the south, but what I felt from the news reports and everyday people was palpable. Information is very important for my work and I have had to research and understand some very difficult and painful social issues. I have learned better defense mechanisms along the way, but it took time to master some degree of detachment.

I voted “yes” because after a while, one tragedy after another, one disaster after another, and always the guilt trip laid on us by those who think the United States and its citizens should be responsible for every damned thing that happens in the world, is just more than I can take these days. I can’t be a player in a rousing game of “Ain’t it Awful” day after day, week after week and month after month, etc. and it have no effect on me. Your physical body cannot distinguish between what is “news” and what is actually happening to you personally. So, all that anger, rage, guilt, upset, that we experience is in there having an effect on our physical body and our emotional well being. As far as our body knows, the tragedy we read about and have a strong feeling about is real to us..same with movies. Mentally we recognize that its just a movie or a TV news report or a so called “documentary”, but your body doesn’t get it like that. The bodys response to thoughts is an “emotion” and those emotions we feel are just as real as if we were there..and being bombarded, day after day with negative energy like that will produce effects in our body I don’t want turned into my own personal tragic situation. So I know the press isn’t turned into this realization and we have our clicker in our hands and need to use it more often.

our whole house, even our almost 4 year old, goes silent when the Jim Lehrer Report ends the news with the names of those that have fallen - I hope I never get de-sensitized and I hope my kids don’t as well - if we get de-sensitized, then we stop caring and apathy and complacency reign - the success of a democracy is dependent upon us all giving a damn about what happens

I am desensitized in that I don’t want to listen to the local news, when really they could call it the six o’clock murder report. I don’t want to know how many people were shot, or attacked, or vandalized in the local area today. I am desensitized in that I would rather not know something sad or bad without the accompanying education or enlightenment about what happened. If there is a story, an opportunity to educate me as a news-watcher, rather than what feels like an attempt to appeal to the basest human nature, the part that wants to look when passing an accident on the street, the idle curiosity that makes me turn my head, I want to hear the story, the history and the whole story. When I first watched BBC News years ago, I was so fascinated and thrilled by the way they tell the back story as well as the current events. They don’t say “10 people died horrifically today” without then saying why or what the context is. They educate me about the whole story. The local news in America, where I am from, is so limited that I stopped watching it very early on in life, and remained completely oblivious to world events, as well as how many people were murdered that day in the local area. Accessing news from an intelligent source, such as BBC or NPR, allows me to listen and learn, and to that I remain sensitive. I am desensitized. I lived in LA during the riots in 1992, and I lived in Manhattan on 9/11, and in the days following both of those events I found myself crying then screaming, moaning, wailing from the pain of those days. My brain could not process what it had seen; my heart could not process what it felt. In the spirit of “getting on with day to day living” and rebuilding, there was really no room for screaming in pain. How can you continue on when your mind and heart are reeling from what they have seen and felt? You can only do it if you become desensitized. I have a hard shell and a soft center, and sometimes I feel my shell cracking. There is so much that is sad, and hard, and deeply wrong. But it is a natural part of life, and I don’t know why. But I have to accept it and keep moving. I count on good news sources to continue to enlighten and educate. This is my first time posting on this website, and I hope it will become a regular place for me to share. Thanks!

I mostly feel overwhelmed and discouraged. I think we need to know about some tragedies so we can work to correct the situations. It would be wonderful to also hear about people who make a positive difference. A balance.

The trouble with large numbers was aptly put by old Jose Stalin, yup Koba himself: millions are merely a statistic, but one is a tragedy, and I paraphrased that; he ought to have known since he butchered 30 million of his own people in the 1930’s purges and the Gulag Archipelago. The numbers are too big to really grasp; how does one get ones mind around that large an astronomical number—it’s near impossible but show a few tragedies and they are true tragedies and that the human mind can comprehend and empathise. Looking at the Hubble Ultra Deep filied picture of 3000 galaxies that no one realized were there in black space in the universe is graspable, understandable—one can see them in all their beauty but dealing with larger numbers in ..no way. Hence the 800k dead in Rwanda that Ms Judd talks so movingly of, but look at the bones and then comprehension begins; listen to the stories and the Nazi death factories become manageable. http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/07/image/a/format…

No, I’m not desensitized, but I do feel overwhelmed by the news of tragedies. I remember watching the coverage of Katrina, and especially the thousands of people packed into the stadium with no food or water. I shouted at the TV set “Do something! Do something! If reporters can get inside, then why can’t the Red Cross help?” I called my son and just wept at what I was seeing. Every tragedy involves real people with families who are experiencing nearly unfathomable suffering. Whenever I read Ashley Judd’s diaries, I am always in tears. Seeing children, who cannot possibly comprehend what is happening to them, looking so lost and frightened, is almost physically painful for me. As humans we have been given the ability to emphasize, and if we ever lose that capability, we might as well give up.