The Flight of News

Date: 08th March 2014

Sometime around midnight this past Friday, a Malaysian Airlines flight - MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur. It had 239 people on board, was bound for Beijing, and wore none of the trappings of a newsworthy item.

Two hours later, it dropped off the radar and vanished. That led to a whole lot of saying:

1. China said the plane never entered its airspace. 
2. Malaysia Airlines said it had contacted the kith and kin of all on the plane. 
3. Vietnam - that little country that lies in the plane's flight path - said it received no distress signal. 
4. And thereafter, China started to say that it was concerned for the 158 Chinese on board the MH370.

A few hours later, all the three countries probably realised what they will have to deal with and sent out search-and-rescue teams to look for the plane. None used the inevitable world and no one even began to consider they they may not have anything to hope for. 

In the meantime, news channels are pursuing every teeny tiny bit of information about the matter. I love the zest with which they do that. But I hate the manner in which they smatter it with their own perspectives. Which is why I stayed clear of NDTV, Times Now, etc., etc. and took a look at what BBC and CNN had to say. 

BBC: Here's what I know.  I'll call if I have more to tell.

BBC stuck to its stiff upper lip and narrated the details as they poured into its offices. It showed the flight path, narrated the sequence of events just as it occurred, threw in a few library pictures of a Malaysian Airlines plane, and promised to tell us more as and when anything sparkling new reached its desk. BBC's news segment, consequently, was short (two - three minutes perhaps), crisp, and to the point. Just the way the news must be.

CNN, on the other hand, was not quite content with stating the facts. It launched a dramatic full-fledged investigation as well: 

• Why has the plane not been found as yet? 
• How is it that it's taking so long? 
• In this age of social media and technology that cuts new edges almost every day, has it to be this difficult to locate a very huge plane?

All that when they had as much information as the BBC. As if those questions weren't enough, it pulled Richard Quest, its inhouse aviation expert, into the proceedings.

"Tell us Richard," the CNN anchor began, "How is it that the plane has not yet been found?"

Richard--ever the lover of drama--hemmed and hawed and said, "It is a big plane you know. If it went down on land, you'll be looking for it on land. If it went down in the sea, you'll be looking for flotsam in the sea. But as yet the exact location where the plane is or went down is not known for certain."

He then went on to explain how sometime ago, when a huge plane had crashed onto a mountain range deep in the Atlantic Ocean, it was weeks before the plane was found, months before the wreckage was looked through, and years before the blackboxes were recovered. "So," he said as he made a face that wrote concern on every inch of his lips, "such things take time."

"Do you think they know where the plane is?" the CNN anchor asked as if his tongue were stuck to that question.

Richard plugged his lecturing voice into his throat and "Well," he said, "if you know the speed of the plane and the flight path, you can calculate backwards and determine roughly where it may have been when it lost contact with the air traffic control towers."

CNN: I am a bit too curious you know. After all, you know who I am!

Now all that made for some great analysis. But it seemed unnecessary at this point in time. Here was a straightforward story that just needed to be told the way it unravelled. Instead, CNN chose to play it like a housewife calling her friends over for a gossip session.  I did not want that. I just wanted to be told what happened where. If CNN did not know for sure why what happened, it should not have even gone down that road. The detailed dissection, it can save for later. 

Well, next time round, I'll stick to the BBC alone.