Op-Ed: Responsible Journalism and the Air Crash Du Jour

Captain Auxier is 100% correct. The so called "aviation experts" are vomiting personal and "stupid" opinions all over the media!!! Richard (loud & boring) Quest, a "nobody" regarding "real aviation" knowledge, is acting like a "drunk parrot" talking non stop about all kinds of "stuff" that he "thinks" is related to the crash.
Those "experts" need to slow down, take a few pills, and wake up to the fact that there are "real" families and relatives to the passengers and crew thar deserve RESPECT.

Let the "real" experts on aviation take care of the investigation!!! And remember that sometimes..SILENCE.... is a gift.

When we had a news cycle of only a couple hours a day there wasn't time for lots of speculation. With news now a 24/7 business of course they are going to fill time with anything they can. Simple solution to hearing all this is to not tune in. You can call it irresponsible reporting but somebody is watching or it wouldn't exist. News cycle is really no longer journalism in the purest sense. It's entertainment journalism.

With respect to Mr. Auxier, I feel he misses an important point. The media to which he refers is called 'NEWS' as a label rather than a description. Their goals are not to inform in within the framework of 'news as a public trust', but self aggrandizement and attracting advertizing dollars.

I agree with pretty much everything in the article. However, the deterioration of journalistic integrity has been an ongoing process and is hardly unique to arcane subjects like aviation. Cable news channels and internet news sources are largely driven by a desire to get people to watch and click, and to that end they will say and show just about anything. "Terrorist fist jab" comes to mind, among others.

It's not about news anymore, and when we want to learn about things we need to be careful and discriminating in choosing our news sources. I recommend reading major newspapers, since their existence is and always has been predicated upon being a trustworthy source of information (a few hiccups notwithstanding, of course).

Looking for "responsible journalism" on TV is like looking for an honest politician in Washington DC.

There are many things we do not know about the crash, but there are a few things we do know:

1) It was NOT a suicide. Like the Lufthansa guy said, suicide is when you kill yourself. When you also kill 150 people, it's something else.

2) It was NOT because the First Officer was depressed. There are millions of people who are depressed, and they do not kill hundreds of other people. Not even one.

3) If you are trying to "understand" why the crash happened, you are a fool. We might understand HOW it happened, but there is no REASON this happened, as if it could justify the deaths of all those people. There is no WHY.

Thank you Captain Auxier, well stated. The US cable coverage boggles the mind for its idiocy, CNN in particular is a joke and Richard Quest is a moron period, i guess all that meth has rattled his already misfiring synapse.

Thank you.

Awesome article Thanks Captain... see ya back over on Face Book..

I think Richard Quest at CNN is terrible.......one of the worst "aviation experts"

If you want Journalism with a capital J, read a newspaper of record, of which there are many to choose from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record

If you want infotainment, watch the 24 hour, ratings driven, cable news "shows" whose only commitment is to keeping eyeballs glued to the screen.

Yellow Journalism used by CNN and FoxNews as described by Wikipedia

1. scare headlines in huge print, often of minor news
2. lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings
3. use of faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudoscience, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts
4. emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips
5. dramatic sympathy with the "underdog" against the system.

Thanks for posting the link to this article. Very informative. It's interesting that I was reading somewhere that planes like the A320 - where the pilot is not as engaged in actually flying the plane (leaving much of it to the computers) might be degrading the pilot's abilities. The suggestion was that those flying the planes fly through take off to 10,000 feet and from 10,000 feet through roll out. While that wouldn't have mattered in the case of the Germanwings flight, it's an interesting thought...

Generally I agree with Capt. Auxier, but this afternoon I saw at least 4 or 5 experts (former pilots or NTSB members) try to tamp down the usual rush to judgement. I must day that I was impressed, surprised really, by most of the afternoon news on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC. In light of the allegations made earlier by the French prosecutor, it would have been easy to go off on the First Officer on the Germanwings flight. Even the reporters were better than usual, although that's not saying much. Thankfully, Mary Schiavo was nowhere in sight.

It boggles my mind that nearly 112 years since the Wright brothers first took to the skies, the average person still knows very little about aviation.

wow this pilots full of fluff, looks like a kid who never got noticed, geez people who may not know all the sysytems on an A320 - may also be capable of explaining aircraft and studying like you. This stroy has little to no real information -
exhale and go back to the stck ....

The Captains certainly describe the situation. In my former profession we referred to experts as: "eX an unknown quantity, a spurt as a drip under pressure". I weary of the endless flash views of air scenes, many un-related to the issue while a background voice goes on with little information, much less facts. Preach on sir!
50 year private pilot

I must be listening to a different CNN than the good Captain. First of all, their 'aviation panel" is overloaded with retired captains and ex-NTSB appointees, and if I hear even 1 more time from them about how safe airline travel is and lets-not-speculate, then i'm gonna have to hit the silk

Yes, airline travel IS safe...so much so that there is no "crash du jour'--at least in the good 'ol USA. So many people nowadays depend on flying, and airline crashes are so rare, that when one DOES occur, people want to know WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED, because they're catching one of those big birds sometime soon themselves. So CNN is just doing its job by filling a need to discuss in a community way what may have occurred. i heard constsnt disclaimers from CNN anchors about their own aviation knowledge, and, if anything, an over-deferral to folks who polished the left seat in another era--making me wonder how relevant to today's aviation environment their opinions are.

So, instead of blaming the media for doing its job, the aviation community should now take a very deep breath and look into its OWN mirror of self-satisfaction and complacency, and ask itself some searching questions. It might start by calling this latest incident what it is---"Mass Murder by Airplane.' In an age where the man or woman flying the machine is the weakest link, a thoughtful plan of action is what distinguishes a pilot from a company cheerleader...that's what pilots do---think for themselves...forget the media and do your damnedest to insure that it never, ever happens again to you or anyone else.

I'm waiting for Les Abend to reach across the desk one of these days and smack some sense into Richard. You can just see it in his face sometimes.

The only thing I am yet to see is a reference to a "small" Airbus. Reporters apparently have not learned that you can describe airplanes by the number of engines or number of seats; everything smaller than a 747 is "small" to them. An RJ100 crashed in Missouri a few years ago and, sure enough, it was reported to be a "small" commercial airliner.

spot on, Cap'n Crunch, er, Aux..(oops) Kind of gives you pause when you realize how far out their depth these talking heads really are. Bear this in mind the next time a 'market analyst' or 'medical advisor' is yammering-on, on any of the news grinders. [insert sound of nervous chuckle] Again, well put, Capt. Auxier!