Is the fact that there is no news about the missing plane
really “breaking news!?” Granted, I spent four of the last eight days
scampering across a desert landscape looking at rocks, mountains, and patterns
in the sand to see the geology that I have been studying, so to me this news
would be new, but really? “Breaking News!?”
There has been practically nothing new happen in the investigation
since before I headed down to Palm Springs. So why is it that CNN spent twenty
minutes on Tuesday morning interrupting things that could arguably be called ‘news’
for updates of the ilk that logically parse out to “we’ve learned nothing new
for the past few days”?
Were it anybody but CNN (a formerly outstanding news source)
I would not have believed the interview I saw early Tuesday morning. CNN
actually spent twenty minutes interviewing a pilot of a plane that wasn’t
hijacked a dozen years ago. The entire interview was parsed as speculation as
to what the crew of the missing plane might have been experiencing if the plane
as hijacked.
It happened again this morning. An exorbitant amount of time
was spent playing guessing games as to what (if anything) the blurry images of ‘debris’
(?) spotted five days ago might be. How is this breaking news? It happened days
ago; it is yet to be verified; and it is still an unknown! It fails every test
that used to be applied in the decision making on what should be called ‘news.’
I know that I give a lot of grief to Faux News for just
making stuff up and claiming that it is true, but this is really a new low for
CNN. I understand that they have to fill 24-hours with “news” and that it is
cheaper to speculate than to report, but this was really beyond the pall. My
old journalism professor must be (to steal a line from my mom) mad enough to
spit tacks over this! I know that I am. I am voting with my remote – I guess I
will be searching (in vain, perhaps) somewhere else for broadcast news.
Wherever you are today, I hope that you’ll take a stand against
speculation as journalism!
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