Pundits Weigh in on Televised “Planes in Trouble”
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 12.23.05 | 2:19 AM ET
Now that televised emergency plane landings are an official cable news trend, media pundits are being asked to measure their significance. “You could be really cynical and say that we’re all stupid and easily entertained but I think it says something about the power of stories in our culture,” Kelly McBride, a media ethicist at the Poynter Institute of journalism, told Reuters.
Northwestern University journalism professor George Harmon has another theory: “[S]ome stories on TV beget similar stories: Shark attacks, wildfires and missing blond girls ... the format has been established.” My take? Let’s just say I’m a bit of a cynic.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
