Breaking news: Britney Spears’ father given conservatorship of her assets! Breaking news: President-elect Barack Obama takes his daughters to school! Breaking news: We are expecting breaking news shortly!

Breaking news: In today’s media, the term most certainly does not carry the weight it used to. From pathetic celebrity litigation to the mundane details of politicians’ travel schedules, it seems that just about everything about anyone has become newsworthy. But even with the profusion of this sort of “important” news, networks still find the time to transmit to the average American tales of singing dogs and hamsters with a knack for interior design.

All the while, the real breaking news is left on the back burner. Violence rages on and children continue to starve around the world. But those realities aren’t news, right? Innocent human beings die needlessly on a daily basis; this has always been a fact. So why worry about something we can’t change? It’s just so morbid! I can’t count how many times I’ve heard these ideas repeated when issues related to death and destitution are brought up in conversation.

I expected that things would be different when I came to Georgetown, yet the trend persists even at a university renowned for its international focus. Apparently, people don’t enjoy troubling their lives with the unsavory realities of the lives of others.

Personally, I was always bothered by such reactions; I saw them as reflections of the apathy in people who have never been forced to go a day without a meal or walk home from school fearing an attack by militants. Yet recently, I have come to a different conclusion. Perhaps disinterested reactions to issues of global poverty and death are not reflections of apathy, but of desensitization.

The televised news may be most accurately described as providing too many stimuli. In the effort to hold the increasingly short attention spans of modern viewers, news networks have invested in creating an interface tailored to twenty-first century consumers, just like any other company packaging its product. Tickers, which were once only at the bottom of the screen, have been layered on top of each other and even placed along the top of screens, bringing us stock quotes, entertainment news and the results of the latest O.J. Simpson trial.

eanwhile, the portion of the screen with the actual news report has grown smaller and smaller, with the surrounding logos and graphics threatening to reduce it to the size of a postage stamp. Adding insult to injury, epic music and three-dimensional images of flags and tanks are used to make wars and other conflicts appealing and engaging to viewers. It is no wonder that stories of international crises are unappetizing and can no longer hold the attention of the public. Apathetic reactions are not a reflection of a lack of concern, but are instead symptomatic of the fact that no one believes they are capable of changing these realities.

Nonetheless, it is possible that the average American does require the news to play like a movie in order to tune in. But perhaps it’s time for news networks to take a closer look at the recent presidential elections and draw some conclusions about their own business.

I was never originally impressed by Obama, finding his promises of hope and change ambiguous and rhetorically empty. Yet in retrospect, it was these very promises that made Obama shine over his adversary.

The American people are tired of being helpless to the negative realities of this nation and the world as a whole. The media ought to try and make the news less melodramatic and a little more hopeful; they may just gain some new viewers.

Aakib Khaled is a junior in the School of Foreign Service. He can be reached at khaledthehoya.com. Cura Personalis appears every other Friday.

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