Tsunamis and Death-Toll Pornography

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The bigger the number of victims, and the further away they live from us, of course, the easier it becomes to distance ourselves from what we are watching. We can accept video of hundreds of anonymous bodies washing up onto the shores of southern India, but would we accept video of the corpse of a young girl floating in a neighborhood swimming pool being shown on our local news? Through the news, we have become accustomed to seeing people in the developing world as victims: victims of war, victims of famine, victims of disease, and victims of natural disasters. In their eternal state of victim-hood, these people have had their right to individuality and dignity stripped, and thus their corpses are fair game for the evening news.