TWA Flight 800: Post-Crash Media Madness

I’m starting to wonder if the world has perhaps gone mad.
I’ve been following the TWA air crash story pretty close, since I saw the first “this just in” report and kinda got caught up in it. But some of the things I’ve heard emerge from the media have been extraordinary.
I’ve mainly been perusing CNN, ABC News, and CNBC in roughly equal measures. At this point I have to favor ABC News’ coverage of the event because they seem to be trying to stick to doing news more than the other two.
Within 24 hours, CNN has a big graphics package and soft piano music beds under what seems like every other report on the subject. One of their guest commentators mentioned something about Clinton turning the event into an election issue. This seems like the height of hypocrisy when the forum through which that view is aired is already concentrating so hard on ratings – a Nielsen election issue, if you will.
CNBC’s coverage has been fairly decent, though I was unlucky enough to happen across “Rivera: Live!” – Geraldo Rivera’s new excuse for a current issues show – and heard Geraldo himself say “We know this was not an accident. Why don’t they tell us what’s going on?” Granted, this is Geraldo, and 99% of the time if not more, he’s full of shit. But people do listen to the little bugger, and I seriously question CNBC’s editorial policy for letting him go off half-cocked like that.
The Governor and Mayor of New York both unleash verbal attacks on TWA, but you know full well that if TWA had released a premature passenger manifest and it turned out to be wrong in even one instance, they could be in serious trouble, and no one would let them off the hook for that either. I wouldn’t want to be in TWA’s shoes right now.
At a press conference held by the National Transporation Safety Board questions were put to the representatives of the investigative team: “Have you found the bomb?” “Is there any evidence of a ground-to-air missile?”
What…??!? A missile? Fired by whom? I wasn’t aware that the State of New York had declared war on commercial air travel, at least not until after the crash had already occurred (see above).
There are no answers at this point because it’s roughly twenty-one hours since this thing happened; search efforts have concentrated mainly on passengers. With no survivors and no realistic prospect of any survivors, the media and the public seem to be trying to find someone, anyone to blame now. Was it terrorism? No one knows yet. Has TWA been negligent before the crash, sloppy after the crash? It’s possible, but this is no easier for them than it is for anyone else. It’ll all have to come out in the wash, so to speak.
The reporters were carping last night about how these things also bring people together. Well, yeah, but I’ll also say what I said about that observation after the tornado and the fire here: it also brings the nuts out of the woodwork. A mere day after the crash of TWA 800 “brought everyone together,” people are now using it to tear each other apart.
Thank goodness I work on commercials and promotional items instead of news in the television industry. I think I’d have some serious ethical dilemmas and arguments in such a case.