'Compassion Fatigue'
author is featured

Susan Moeller, author of "Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death," was a featured speaker April 19 in Whitley Auditorium. The presentation was part of the university's International Week, April 14-20. Moeller spoke about the ways in which American media coverage of certain international issues influences our ability to understand the world. She drew the conclusions for her talk and her book after examining the coverage of international crises by television, newspapers and news magazines during the 1980s and 1990s.

Moeller's book"Compassion Fatigue" is required reading in some School of Communications classes. She is also the author of "Shooting War: Photography and the American Experience of Combat." She earned a Ph.D. in the history of American civilization and a master's degree in history from Harvard and she earned a bachelor's degree at Yale.

She is an assistant professor in the college of journalism at the University of Maryland. She previously taught at Brandeis University (where she was director of the journalism program), Princeton University and Pacific Lutheran University, and as a Fulbright professor in international relations at universities in Islamabad, Pakistan and Bangkok, Thailand.

Moeller has been a columnist, writer and photographer, working for or contributing to numerous publications, including: the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, Ms., the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Seattle Times, the Washington Post and Washingtonian magazine. She actively consults on new media.