By this point, it’s almost impossible to have remained unaware of the Malaysian airline plane that mysteriously disappeared over a week ago. And if by some slim chance this story sounds new, turn on any news station. It’s almost guaranteed to be on at any point in the day… all day.
Ever since the disappearance, that’s all anyone has talked about, including the news broadcasts. And this news is getting old. It happens sometimes when it’s a “slow week” for the news; a story so fascinating and mysterious comes along that captures the interest of everyone who hears. It then gets covered from absolutely every angle imaginable. This isn’t to say that the mysterious vanishing isn’t important, because in reality, it’s completely baffling. Really. How does one lose a plane? It sounds absurd, and therefore is an incredible story. However, it is just one story. It shouldn’t control the airwaves on an almost constant basis like it has been.
The facts that can be inferred are simple. A plane out of Malaysia has gone missing. It is, as of now, no longer in the air, simply because there isn’t enough gas to have kept it up for this long. This also means that it has landed somewhere, potentially into the ocean. With zero contact from any of the 239 people aboard and no readings from the plane’s transponder, we have no knowledge of their whereabouts. These are the facts and most everything else is just speculation at this point. Terrorism, crash, conspiracy theory; the possibilities are endless, but that’s all they are: possibilities. And yet with all of this knowledge that can be easily boiled down briefly, every time a news channel is switched on, ‘there’s something about the plane again.’
There’s always news, and it’s up to the channels and stations we depend on to give us that news. It has become a concern however that news has lost a bit of its meaning and edge and focused solely on what’s popular or trending. Court cases, missing planes and passengers, missing or murdered children: these are all stories people want to hear about and are worth coverage, but there comes a point where ‘news isn’t really ‘new’ anymore. People and testimonies are exploited, ‘what-ifs’ control the airtime, and the repetitive nature of the broadcast becomes all too commonplace. It’s time to push the stories that matter and are current to the forefront of the media instead of filling the gaps with theories of a missing plane’s location.
