Okay, enough with the breaking news coverage of the missing Malaysian airplane already. Not that this isn’t a tragedy and a huge mystery all wrapped into one–it definitely is. But we’ve now had several days of wall to wall coverage of a story we don’t really have any information about. So what we get is a parade of experts (read: people who once flew on a plane) theorizing about what might have happened in a hypothetical universe, and we get CNN’s Don Lemon playing with a plastic toy Boeing that’s “exactly” like the real one. Who wouldn’t love that gig? If I have to hear the words “All right, good night” one more time, I’m going to take a U-turn into the ocean myself. Nobody knows if those words mean anything, nobody knows if they’re important or not. And I can’t see how endlessly dissecting half-imagined facts is helping those who have loved ones missing in this disaster.
I finally had to turn the television off when one of the hosts shared this gem with the audience: “And this shows that whatever happened, happened.” Thank you for your deep insights, news media. How did we ever make it through crisis situations without you?
