Grief porn

Grief porn is a pejorative neologistic expression often used to describe a hyper-attention, intrusive voyeurism and "gratuitous indulgence of tangential association with tragedy". It is usually used to describ the behavior of the news media in the wake of a tragedy, and distinctly different from Schadenfreude, in that it is a forced or artificial commiseration in response to unfortunate events, whereas Schadenfreude is a joy at the misfortune of others, though critics note that the nature of the modern 24-hour news cycle and the need to produce news stories quickly tend to blur that distinction.

Origin of usage

The term was reportedly first coined by Robert Yates, an assistant editor for The Observer in a news conference on April 7, 2005. Described as the following:

Grief Porn. (n.) Gratification derived from a tenuous connection to the misfortunes of others; the gratuitous indulgence of tangential association with tragedy; getting off on really bad news.

Yates claimed that the phenomenon was first noticed in the media frenzy that followed the death of Princess Diana and the media frenzy that occurred afterwards. He further noted that it usually occurs in times of national mourning and international disaster, and commented dryly that it primarily affects people working in media.

Urban Dictionary defines grief porn as "a form of masturbatory frenzy engaged in by the media and politicians when there is some form of disaster. It exploits the basic voyeuristic nature of humans who get their rocks off by feeling good by looking at the suffering of others".

Carol Sarler, speaking as a guest columnist for The Times (London), sarcastically notes that "this new and peculiar pornography of grief" is sometimes called a 'tribute', "the cruder truth is that ersatz grief is now the new pornography; like the worst of hard-core, it is stimulus by proxy, voyeuristically piggy-backing upon that which might otherwise be deemed personal and private, for no better reason than frisson and the quickening of an otherwise jaded pulse.

The Observer's Daniel Finkelstein, defines the term as "a rather tasteless fascination with other people's disasters and a sentimentalism that is out of place", but considers it misapplied at times. Using the example of the Madeleine McCann a four-year-old child who went missing while on holiday with her parents, Finkelstein theorizes that "we don't follow the McCann case because we are grief junkies. Most of us follow it because we fancy ourselves as (Inspector) Morse.