The Problem With The (Traditional) Media Today

CNN reported yesterday that

The Turkish Airlines plane that crashed this week in Amsterdam fell almost vertically to the ground...

Having some interest in things aeronautical, I clicked thru and started reading the article.

They followed up with additional information:

That sudden drop indicates the aircraft did not have enough forward speed when it crashed...

...Forgive me now, but I'm going to get pedantic...

How does a vertical drop "indicate" that there wasn't enough forward speed? It's as if they're telling us that the vertical drop is "evidence" and that the lack of forward speed is a "conclusion". And because such logic is a bit technical (in their estimation), they've decided that they need to explain it to us.

Except that a vertical drop is not evidence for "lack of forward speed". There is no indication at all. Vertical means "not horizontal". There is no logic to follow. There is nothing to explain. This is not an if p then q kind of situation; p and q are the same thing.

And this, you see, is the problem I have with mainstream journalism today. It's all about pumping up the words to make it seem like they have something meaningful to say, and in most cases they either don't or they're just mindlessly regurgitating what someone else said.

In this case, a single statement would have sufficed: The plane crashed vertically down into the ground. Period. End of story.

But of course, that doesn't count at "reporting", and if you've got a deadline and you yourself really don't understand the difference between vertical and horizontal because you never understood all that Cartesian geometry stuff anyway, what you need to do is invent something that makes is seem like you've uncovered a story: Experts conclude plane had no horizontal speed based on vertical trajectory evidence!

I'm not really sure why I bother going to this place for news, anyway. My bad, I confess.

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