Have Ebola and Kobane Lost Their Entertainment Value?

There is nothing much to laugh at when it comes to the devastating effects of the current Ebola outbreak or the bloody struggle for the Syrian town of Kobane. While, no doubt, some of those living in the shadow of either will laudably engage in gallows humour in an effort to lift their spirits or to alleviate their fears, these are not the stuff of the entertainment industry; or are they?

Little has been said on these topics in the past week or so on mainstream news programmes or daily newspapers in the UK and Ireland. Ebola continues to kill hundreds in West Africa and to provide a threat to international health. Dozens die daily in Kobane and the town retains the same strategic and symbolic significance it did a month ago, but it has all gone a little quiet on the news front.

Those who decide which news we shall hear, and how we shall hear it, turn the taps of information on and off as they choose. In spite of the internet, public interest in a subject remains driven to a large extent by the decisions of a few news-moguls. This gives them enormous power and influence, certainly much more power than the majority of elected politicians or other public representatives.

While, in some cases, the motives behind the choice of news items and the ways in which they are covered by the media can rightly be seen as having something of an Orwellian, sinister element, coverage of events such as the Ebola outbreak and the battle for Kobane, succumb, in part, to a much more mundane analysis: they are deemed not to be interesting enough to keep people watching or buying. As such, they have a short shelf-life; they have lost their entertainment value to shock or to thrill. They will be dusted off every so often, almost apologetically, but the nation is enjoined to let them slip to the back of its communal mind.

Of course, there is a cause and effect circle at play here: the media offer us a juicy bit of news which titillates us and we snap eagerly at it, chew it for a while and return for something new to salivate over; the media recognise that our taste-buds have become satiated and offer us something new on which to masticate.

Even our charitable giving requires more and more extreme entertainment to prise cash from our wallets and funds from our bank cards. Celebrities have to swim seas and lakes or run multi-marathons to make us ‘oooh!’ and ‘aaah!’ long enough to stretch an arm along the sofa and reach for a mobile phone to make a donation. It works: in six hours last year the BBC’s ‘Children in Need’ programme raised over £31m; in two days the UK Ebola fund has raised £4m.

So maybe we get what we deserve; anyone know of an entertaining tragedy that I can view?