Wow, this was a front page story for a long time. Western media went full blast blaming the Russians and the separatists in the east of shooting the plane down with a missile.
Fine and dandy. Then these same folks were obstructing western nations or Malaysia from obtaining the black boxes or examining the crash site.
Finally the black boxes were obtained. There has been complete silence since about their contents except for some vague comments about shrapnel damage.
Last I heard it may take years to complete the analysis and assign blame. There was talk that the separatists altered the evidence, which might also slow things down. The real answer is that there is nothing newsworthy to report at this time. Once everything is wrapped up it will once again top the news… at least for a while.
Because there isn’t anything new to report. Crash investigations are very slow and methodical. The preliminary report from the Dutch investigators is due in early September. But there is no doubt that the plane was shot down.
Mostly because nothing “new” has been revealed recently. I’m sure that if the black boxes revealed that the plane was actually attacked by velociraptors with jetpacks instead of being shot down, it would be in the news again.
I’m not sure what the black box would reveal that we don’t already know. The black box will only tell you that the airplane blew up suddenly, which is hardly in question.
Doesn’t the entire world agree that the plane was shot down by a specific sort of Russian-made missile? The only question is about who fired the missile, and perhaps where it came from. Was it fired by the Ukrainian rebels, and was it captured from the Ukrainian military or supplied by Russia? Or was it fired by the Ukrainian military? Ukraine, the US, and the rest of Europe are certain that the evidence points to the rebels firing the missile. The rebels themselves very briefly claimed responsibility, when they thought they had shot down a Ukrainian military transport. Only the Russian government is stating otherwise, without presenting evidence that I’m aware of.
There is news except it is mostly only covered in foreign countries: Malyasia just had a national day of mourning; the number of victims who have been identified is up to 173 people…
The crash site is still in the middle of the war and it will probably only be when investigators have full access and start finding more bodies that you will see more news.
Other new news crowds out MH17 news–for example the beheading of James Foley, the shooting in Missouri, the ALS ice buckets, atrocities in Iraq…
That would be important if there was somehow a criminal prosecution, or perhaps if there was the political will to deploy UN peacekeepers or NATO ground troops in Ukraine. For now, the US and Europe has decided that the evidence and the political will is sufficient to apply increasing sanctions to Russia.
Personally, my WAG is that the leaders of every nation state knows exactly what happened without any shred of doubt. Much of the intelligence apparatus of every NATO state was built to monitor military activity in eastern Europe and Russia, after all. I assume that there is tons of evidence that remains secret, in addition to the few specific reports that have been released for public consumption.
I also suggest that the US and west is now realigning towards Russia in its support of Syria and needs to forget this whole regrettable incident in the name of combating ISIS…
As seen by MH370, not having anything new to report isn’t always sufficient to stop reporting it. What stops it is when the stations have something else that they consider more important to report.
CNN’s obsession about MH370 was getting kind of funny, but the big difference was that the disappearance was such a total mystery, and there were constantly snippets of news about new leads and new theories. With MH17, except for those of us who get all our news from Russia Today, we pretty much know what happened, and as already mentioned the results of formal investigations will take some time, particularly since it appears that the rebels have quite significantly damaged and removed evidence from the crash site. I would ask the OP just exactly what kind of further news reporting he would expect to see.
That said, you’re also quite right that continued reporting does also depend on what other competing news stories there are. I still remember being totally sick to death of the constant droning on and on and on about the “scandal” of Gary Condit and the disappearance of Chandra Levy, the kind of salacious story that gets all the housewives and other soap opera types tuning in to CNN 24/7. The stories about Condit and Levy stopped abruptly on September 11, 2001, and we never heard about them again. It was the only good thing that happened that day.
Just what type of “smoking gun” did you expect a black box to record? Flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders may reveal evidence of catastrophic structural breakup, but that is something that was never in doubt. They are not going to answer the question of whether Russians and Ukranian separatists had a hand in the incident (which you seem skeptical about, judging by your tone).
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Actually, we did too hear about that story again over the years. Ingmar Guandique was identified as a “person of interest” in Sept. 2001, but not taken seriously at the time. From 2006 through 2009, evidence and interest accumulated; in 2009, he was accused, and 2010 he was tried and convicted. All of those developments bumped the story.
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Mike Brown got shot and there is rioting in the streets! Give CNN a break, already. You think they got time for more than one story at a time? There’s only 24 hours in a day, after all. :rolleyes:
I think my point is that there was such a brouhaha over obtaining the black boxes… and now there’s no news about what they demonstrate?
Also, satellite monitoring should be able to prove where the firing came from… if indeed it was a ground rocket.
I’m just thinking that if the US had anything approximating a smoking gun, from either of the two above-mentioned sources, and they were able to fry Russia and Putin, they would have done so.
There was such a “brouhaha” over getting the black boxes because the scenario of a group of individuals prohibiting access to and potentially tampering with evidence in an air crash site was almost unprecedented.
As to your second point, US intelligence agencies tend to not like revealing their capabilities.
And there’s nothing to be gained by doing so in this case. It’s clear what happened from an aviation incident standpoint, and the Dutch report will reflect that the plane was hit by a missile and destroyed.
From a political standpoint, even if the CIA knew the name, rank, and Facebook account of the guy who pressed the button, it wouldn’t make any difference.
It certainly would make a difference whether that guy was a Ukrainian rebel or a Russian military officer–and I don’t believe it is clear which it was. Anyone know?