Sensationalism:

Whereas in World War II the American media did not show dead soldiers until near the end of the war, and then only from a distance and with the maggots tastefully retouched away, we are currently surrounded by pictures of severed heads and nude corpses. There is hardly an image one can think of that would be off-limits for today’s press. The visual excitement is so high, so dissonant with life as readers understand it, that the imagery, even of the serious kind, can safely be disbelieved. In fact most serious photography would be considered visually too low-key for today’s press. As France’s Paris Match has long put it so eloquently on kiosks throughout the country: “The shock of the photos, the weight of the words.”