My point is not to deny our emotional reactions; indeed, feelings like empathy, compassion and anger connect people across the world and inspire many common practices such as charity dominations, aid packages, debt relief and humanitarian interventions. My point is simply that we must look carefully at how direct news media accounts and belated reconstructions of global politics mobilize both our reason and our passion in trying to put a particular point across. Too often, emotional appeals mask the dominant political agendas that are being served by the media. We've seen how Spielberg's narrative about sacrifice reproduces American patriotism and secures a consensus for contemporary foreign policy decision. And while emotional appeal are more muted in the new a media, they still underscore what purports to be a wholly "factual" endeavor (think, for example, of how front line reports are often anchored with the story of an individual victim of war - a mother, a child, a shopkeeper, a teacher - so that audiences back home can feel a personal connection to someone in a conflict.