Begging for actual and factual closure

Aside from the entertainment shows that are our usual focus, our televiewing this month has been dominated by the mystifying disappearance of a Malaysian Airlines plane bound for Beijing.

At first, the breaking-news reports appeared to be tragic but pretty standard, and global broadcast news organizations covered it with their usual, well-honed expertise.

After 48 hours, however, the actual news updates began thinning out, so the TV news people were faced with the unexpected prospect of having very little to report that was really new, and therefore legitimate news.

Trouble was, they had to say something for a requisite number of minutes each day, since the aerial drama was headline stuff. So, even the biggest news organizations had to resort to “interesting” or “moving” side stories about the passengers and pilots involved.

When more days passed with precious little progress in the investigation, the side stories gave way to plain speculations about what could have happened.

Speculative

To make the what-if scenarios less palpably speculative, “experts” were trotted out to share the lessons they learned from past disasters—which, unfortunately, weren’t as bizarre and mystifying as the Malaysian Airlines “howdunnit!”

Students of broadcast news are learning a lot about what not to do when reporting on a story that could keep begging for actual and factual closure for months.

At first, the natural impulse would be: If there’s nothing new to report, don’t report it. But, in the highly competitive field of broadcast journalism, that’s an unthinkable prospect, because other news-gathering organizations can’t be expected to be as objective and judicious.

Thus, we must gawk at the current spectacle of even famous news people really just talking in circles to fill up the number of minutes required for their newscasts to appear to be “on the job.”

Of course, if nothing much continues to happen, the time will have to come that broadcast news outfits will be cutting their coverage shorter and shorter.

For the next 10 more days, however, the hectic sharing of nonnews is bound to continue, with the sheer length of the impasse instructively changing the TV medium’s depiction of the “personalities” involved.

For instance, just look at how the missing plane’s Malaysian pilots are being portrayed these days, with some “reports” even speculating that they could turn out to be the villains in this mystifying aerial drama. Now also being questioned and even held up for criticism if not ridicule are the Malaysian authorities in charge of the investigation.

All we can say is, we’re glad that the plane involved didn’t fly a Philippine flag—otherwise, can you imagine the flak we’d be getting?

After the Quirino Grandstand and Yolanda controversies, that’s all we need! Well, now it’s the Malaysians’ turn to get the bum raps, and what sweet relief it is to cede the stinging spotlight to them!

PS: As of last Thursday, still little was forthcoming in terms of real developments, so things were taking an even more speculative and even “paranormal” turn, including references to UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle.

All bets and guesses were on, including suicidal pilots, self-styled visionaries’ accounts, a sinister Chinese connection—etc.! —When and how will it all end?!