Mourning the world’s short attention span

We can’t let ourselves be overwhelmed by voracious appetite and cultivate carelessness of the 24-hour news cycle.

This week, much of the international media’s attention is on New York City, as the General Assembly (the annual flagship meeting of the United Nations) gets underway.

City streets are clogged with the limousines and security details of dignitaries and speeches by world leaders are being carefully parsed for nuances and hidden meanings. Veteran journalists and upstart bloggers alike were obsessing over whether there could be a new thaw in US-Iran relations, indicated through a carefully choreographed handshake. Dilma Rousseff, the President of Brazil, used her speech to indicate her extreme displeasure with revelations of the National Security Agency (NSA) spying on her country; King Abdullah of Jordan reminded everyone that hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees were taking shelter in his small, poor country. The Emir of Qatar made oblique references to the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process and unrest in Egypt and French President Hollande gave a forceful defense of France’s intervention in Mali.

What was, perhaps, most striking about all of the speeches is just how outdated all of these topics seemed. Of course they weren’t — and aren’t. The peace deal between the government and rebels in Mali was signed in June 2013, a mere three months ago. Revelations about NSA spying in Brazil were made public only three weeks ago. The Syrian conflict (and attendant refugee crisis), Mideast peace process and Egyptian unrest are all ongoing, and yet still don’t always merit front page bandwidth. Any number of other headlines could be added to this list of newsworthy — yet seemingly unremarkable — stories.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been feted in the news lately due to his powerful diplomacy in opposition to possible US air strikes in Syria. US-sponsored drone strikes under the nebulous control of either the CIA or the Joint Special Operations Command (or perhaps a combination of both) are ongoing in both Pakistan and Yemen, but they no longer merit even a blip on the global media’s radar. The sturm und drang of US congressional hearings on strikes play out in the background like a minor soap opera plot point, but American politicians (and their media enablers) instead choose to take part in the futile drama of the 40^th attempt to defund Obamacare.

Of course, more recent and immediate tragedies spring to mind, three within the past two weeks alone: the terrorist attack on the Nairobi mall in which more than 60 people died; the suicide bombing at a church in Peshawar; and the mass shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington DC (the 20^th mass killing incident in America since President Obama took office). While each new topic might briefly trend on Twitter, or merit a headline on newspapers’ websites, it is quickly replaced by whatever shiny thing has next caught the media (or public’s) attention.

This ephemeral attention span is to be mourned. Victims of disasters, whether natural or manmade, deserve more than fleeting recognition. And the communities of the world that are the unwitting casualties of government misdeeds, whether electronic surveillance or chemical attack, merit more than a relegation to the footnotes of history.

The amazing and exponential advances in technology over the past decade ensure that anyone with an internet connection can be aware of current events practically simultaneously to their occurrence. But such awareness must be harnessed to inspire action — the world needs engaged citizens and we can’t let ourselves be overwhelmed by the voracious appetite and cultivate carelessness of the 24-hour news cycle.

We deserve better from our elected decision-makers — if only we could pay attention long enough to demand it.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 26^th,  2013.

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