The mystery of Flight 370: Excess coverage and lack of knowledge
If you’ve watched or read the news in the past three weeks, you know exactly what has dominated the headlines. Where in the world is the missing Malaysian airplane?
Over the past few weeks, CNN has made it their mission to stream breaking news banners all day about the story.
When discussing just how much time CNN had spent reporting on this story, Dorsey Shaw, a contributor at BuzzFeed said “the network devoted 256 out of 271 broadcast minutes covering Flight 370 on March 12, the same day there was a fatal building explosion in East Harlem among other worthy news topics.”
Chris Cuomo, an anchor for CNN said CNN has been over covering the story because “often in a situation like the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the job is to have more questions than there are answers, because simply not enough is known. So if it seems like we’re nibbling around the edges, it’s because we are. If it seems like you’re trying to avoid the suggestion of speculation, it’s because you have to.”
If a big news story broke in Vermillion, The Volante would report on it, but we wouldn’t drag it out to the point where we aren’t informing our readers. There wouldn’t be excessive coverage like the Malaysian airline.
The way the Malaysian officials have handled this tragedy has not been great either.
The last words said from the cockpit have recently caused some controversy.
On March 17, Malaysian officials originally reported to the public that the final words from the cockpit were “all right, good night.” It’s now been reported that the final words were “Good night Malaysian three-seven-zero.”.
If the officials would have come out from the beginning and released the transcript right away there would be a lot less controversy. Instead, they decided to finally release it before credibility took a hit even further.
I can’t even imagine what the family members are going through right now. Malaysia airlines sent text messages to the family saying, “beyond any reasonable doubt … none of those on board survived.” Family members became furious and called it a premature conclusion.
On March 29, the Minister of Transport Hishammuddin Hussein said, “Even hoping against hope, no matter how remote, of course, we are praying and we will continue our search for the possible survivors.”
It almost seems like they gave up on the investigation and then told the families there could be some survivors so there wouldn’t be much backlash.
If a tragedy occurred on the USD campus, the families of the students victims would want to be aware of the situation — they would want to know what happened and why.
One thing is clear: The longer this story drags on, the less and less those families will actually believe anything the Malaysian officials actually say.
