Voyeurism:

The reader is reduced to anxiety and passivity, unable to intercede with the grievous situations shown, unable even to understand why they exist. The growing instantaneity of media (CNN showing the Iraqi Scud missiles in flight in “real time” during dinner in New York, while students of mine called their sleeping relatives in Tel Aviv to tell them to go to bomb shelters) makes for an insertion of the viewer into events that verges on becoming an accomplice without knowing what else to do except maybe scream.