Habituation to unpleasant news

It is not indifference or callousness that accounts for the intermittent coverage of the Liberian war. The dismaying reality is that tragedy and horror have overloaded the communication circuits. Bosnia and its multiple agonies dominates the evening news, yet for every Sarajevo there are a dozen Greenvilles. These range from blockades and tank assaults on separatist enclaves in the Caucasus to massacres of ethnic Vietnamese by Khmer Rouge in Cambodian jungles.