The Cable Disaster Network

“It was like watching a train wreck”, as the saying goes. Only it was almost a plane wreck – and a tornado – and a hurricane – all coming together in a (pardon the pun) perfect storm of potential disasters for the cable news networks last night.

My father called me, nearly breathless, at 8:05 Wednesday to let me know that he was glad I was home and not flying JetBlue since (1) a JetBlue plane was having a problem with its nosegear and was about to attempt a landing at LAX, (2) Rita had strengthened into a Cat 5 hurricane threatening Texas, and (3) a tornado was about to hit downtown Minneapolis. He quickly ran back to his TV after our chat to make sure he didn’t miss a minute of voyeuristic disaster fun. Being the simple person that I am, and also being unfortunately enthralled with disaster, I’m ashamed to admit I also ran to the TV.

It was eerily like the OJ Simpson freeway drive, and it was also in LA, only it was a white plane and not a white truck. Still, I watched the JetBlue plane circling, burning off its fuel as it prepared for its landing. On CNN, as coverage shifted from anchor to anchor (from Paula Zahn to Larry King in this case), there seemed to be an attempt to get the most dramatic predictions from on phone guests to string viewers along. Larry King, once he took over, tried everything from inserting the word crash, to wondering aloud if there could be some international incident over fixing the Airbus model involved, to wondering (this, most interestingly) if the passengers on the plane were watching his very coverage at that instant (indeed they were, up until the last 10 minutes of the flight). But rather than seek out ways to soothe those people he thought might have been watching, he (and others) sought out experts to help the audience understand the impending tragedy that could occur.

Interspersed with the flight updates were snippets of ongoing hurricane coverage. I thought this was quite interesting since the hurricane wasn’t due to make landfall until about Friday, but I guess there was such a strong impact to be made by continuing to guess how much damage would be done to which parts of Texas (or wherever) given what could be the strength of the hurricane that they stuck with it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a neat satellite image, but once you’ve seen the eye and the cone and the clouds and the pretty colors (not to mention the hordes of “lucky” newspeople who are now the only morons stationed in Galveston), there’s not much more to see. I don’t know, maybe they were hoping the hurricane would take a sudden turn, something like a “Crazy Ivan” for you “Hunt for Red October” fans (though that might only happen if the storm were named Ritalov or something).

What we didn’t see or hear a lot about was the tornado that was supposed to be bearing down on downtown Minneapolis. I heard something at one point where an anchor mentioned, somewhat disappointedly, that it had diminished and moved out to the suburbs, which gave them the benefit of…

…switching back to the *exciting* potential airline tragic crash coverage. However, a fly soon entered the ointment. On the Larry King show, an expert that was on the line to explain what was happening did the unthinkable: he refused to buy into the potential for disaster. Indeed, as I and I’m sure many other frequent fliers thought, this was a classic emergency landing situation that pilots train for, and since they could dump/burn fuel, take their time to position correctly and use all of a very long runway to stop, it seemed quite unlikely – barring something REALLY out of the ordinary – that this would be more than a nerve racking tough landing. The expert said exactly this – he thought the pilots would be quite well trained enough to handle the tilted back landing required and that the greatest potential for passenger injury would probably exist if they had to leave the plane via the emergency slides.

You could almost feel the hatred welling up in Larry King once that statement was made. He tried to nudge the expert back to doom, but while that expert certainly noted that something else could happen – like the main gear might not be locked – he seemed pretty comfortable that everything would be OK. [I also tried to switch coverage to FOX news, but decided that Sean Hannity had nothing to offer this extravaganza. I did wonder if he might suggest that this was somehow due to some liberal shortcomings, but in the end stuck with Larry King.] I also wondered how, since he must also fly very frequently, Larry couldn’t come to the same conclusion. But then I remembered that he was on TELEVISION and his job, rather than to talk sense, was to sensationalize the event as much as possible.

I also noted that the networks, all of which have been impacted (financially) to some extent by the 24 hour cable news networks, ignored the whole thing. There was no scrawl, no break in coverage, etc. during regular programming. This also convinced me that everything would be OK, since despite their capitalist makeup that demanded they stick to their regular programming, no self respecting network would pass up the chance to televise a plane crash.

Speaking of which, I’d also like to know how we were getting the stupendous video of the airplane itself as it flew, circled, and finally landed. It was shot like a golf tournament from above and beside; actually, it seemed a lot like the coverage of the space shuttle landing in which there are chase planes flying alongside. In fact, the shots were perfect until after the successful landing (which went exactly according to the plan the expert mentioned above laid out) and the passengers were disembarking (from movable steps and not the slides – perhaps the airport personnel heard THAT comment and took action), at which time the camera or cameraman couldn’t stay quite still enough.

As I was watching this whole thing play out, I was almost ashamed that I was watching it play out. I thought, as the expert did, that this would turn out fine. But I stayed and watched anyway, playing right into the hands of the Enquirer-esque coverage on CNN. I guess that this is what happens when we have multiple 24-hour news networks, cameras everywhere, and a need for subject matter to fill them. I wonder, if the plane had actually begun to crash, if the coverage would have been stopped – does CNN run a delay? Certainly, televising an impending disaster such as that would be worse for people to watch then 3 minutes of a white woman coming on to Terrell Owens in a football locker room (remember from last season?)? Well, in the confused minds of those in charge of such things, I guess not.

My wife’s uncle’s stepson is a pilot for JetBlue. We wondered, as we watched, whether he might be flying that plane. At first, we hoped it wasn’t him, but in thinking about it, we hoped it was. He’s a great pilot, a cool head, and a responsible person, and given the nature of the problem, I figured it would be a textbook situation for him. And not that I would wish him to be in the situation in the first place, but in viewing the glass as half full, I felt he would be the right person to get the plane home. That, to me, is the essence of the difference in the way these things are covered by the networks and the way they could or should be covered. Rather than seem dismayed about the lack of a disaster, a crash, or whatever, perhaps our newspeople could offer some hope or positive thoughts? For the people in the plane watching themselves live on TV, it might have been nice.