The fact that all the passengers and crew of that Air France plane survived their plane skidding off the runway is not a “miracle”.
No, this isn”t an anti-Jesus rant. This is an anti-media rant. Or, more specifically, an anti-CNN rant.
That network is obsessed with the Air France story, calling it a “miracle flight” and all this nonsense because nobody died.
But here”s the deal: In the grand scheme of things, what happened to the passengers wasn”t all that bad. The runway was really wet, the jet couldn”t stop and it slid off into the woods. Everybody got off the plane (this is where flight attendants earn their keep) and then it “burst into flames”.
It”s that visual – the big plane on fire – that has the media all excited. All those people “escaping the inferno” and all that crap. Nevermind that any fire that was going on while people were still onboard was (obviously) not bad enough to kill anybody.
I didn”t watch any CNN last night because of their obsession with this supposed “miracle”, and I only caught a glimpse of American Morning today [editor"s note: The Cap"n now watches Squawk Box exclusively in the mornings], but they still had their “miracle” graphic up and grabbed interviews with any passenger who would talk to them.
It”s the worst kind of media sensationalism. CNN is trying to make this a bigger story than it is because with video of the flaming plane it looked like a big deal. If there had been no fire after people got off, there would be little or no story.
Want proof? Fine.
Four days ago, an Air India 747 with 333 passengers onboard slid off a rain-soaked runway in Mumbai, India. All the passengers got off safely, and there was no fire.
I did a simple search on CNN.com for Mumbai and got a few Reuters stories about the torrential rains in India, but not a damn word about this incident with the 747.
Of course, the Toronto story is homepage material for CNN.com, and running a search on Toronto shows five stories (three written by CNN) less than 24 hours after the incident.
Now, I know stories about brown people don”t play as well as stories about white people that – except for the accents and b.o. – seem a lot like Americans, but CNN plays itself up as the “international” news organization, and that Air India flight was destined for Chicago, so you have to figure some non-brown people were onboard.
This all smells to me like a hail-Mary play for CNN, desperately trying to create “news” to seem important. I”m sure this kind of thing was going on across the TV news spectrum, but I can”t imagine anything more blatant than CNN”s pimping.
