Ironic?
On Saturday morning there was a 2 inch blerb inside the front page about the shuttle landing this morning.
On Sunday morning…
Roger Chaffee is from my area and we have a planetarium named after him. I have always heard his name pronounced Chay-fee. Is it supposed to be Chaffee with a short “a”? I’ve never heard it that way before.
I must admit that after I’d been pretty well numbed to the nonstop coverage on CNN, I began hearing a modified version of the old MST3K joke:
“How much Brien?”
“Miles O’Brien!”
Former TV and print journalist weighing in. When I was a print journalist, I specialized in science stories (wrote for Science News fercryinoutloud.)
Anyway, most of my colleagues in the biz were not dumb, although the news-reading Ken and Barbies they put at the anchors’ desks were not the brightest folks in the newsroom. In fact, we often remarked (behind their backs) that they were certainly not rocket scientists.
Yes, wouldn’t it be great if Dan Rather, Tom Brokow, et al were also big space geeks, just as the OP is? That sure would have cut down on the dumb questions asked and the unfounded speculations bandied about in the minutes and hours after the shuttle disintegrated.
Well, Dan and Tom and their like are not rocket scientists. But unlike rocket scientists, Dan and Tom will also be thrust onto the national airwaves 10 minutes after the next national tragedy trikes, which may be about … well, who knows what the next big news story will be?
In other words, wouldn’t it have been great if Dan and Tom had been structural engineering experts AND aviation fuel specialists AND architectural design geeks AND trained on commercial jet flight simulators in their spare time? THAT expertise sure would have come in handy in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, wouldn’t it?
And what of the next national disaster? Maybe the Hoover Dam will break next week. Will the OP rant because Dan and Tom are not hydraulic engineer freaks, or soil erosion enthusiasts? THAT kind of knowledge sure would come in handy in analyzing the consequences of THAT disaster, eh?
The reports that I saw Saturday were very good … they were not without gaffes … but they were very good given the circumstances. The news outlets scrambled and got the experts on the air ASAP, and the Dans and the Toms of the media used the experts well, asking them the relevant questions that got the right information out there.
What more could you have wanted in the first 30 minutes?
Actually, in many ways, I’m glad that Dan and Tom and Peter aren’t engineering geeks, because the average viewer isn’t, either. While I personally may have rolled my eyes at all the speculation about surface-to-air missiles in the first half hour, I’m sure that Daryl in Dubuque would have been yelling at the TV, “Ask him if it was a missile!”
Of course, in an ideal world, the anchors would have handed off to an expert anchor (that Miles O’Brien guy on CNN was fairly impressive, as blow-dried suits go), who not only understands the astronautical engineering but also understands the audience. In other words, this anchor dude doesn’t need to ask NASA about the surface-to-air missile; he can come right out and say straight into the camera, “To those of you who are wondering about that, the altitude makes this scenario unlikely in the extreme. Also they couldn’t have gone to the ISS, and they couldn’t have bailed out with parachutes…” and so on.
We don’t live in an ideal world, so I guess I’d prefer dumb-guy anchors who ask dumb-guy questions on behalf of the dumb-guy viewers.
[hijack]
I’m not a regular CNN watcher, but it’s the station I automatically turn to for major breaking news. Was I the only Star Trek geek who kept doing double-takes whenever someone said “and now we go to Miles O’Brien for an update” and kept expecting to hear Colm Meaney’s voice?
I was?
Never mind.
[/hijack]
You can get them, but they’re pretty pricey. The “cheap” ones are around $500, with prices going up from there. Or you can do what I’m doing, and build your own with NASA designed plans!
One particuarly poignant moment for me occurred when Miles O’Brien was illustrating something using a small shuttle model.
It was a model of the Challenger.