Why The Coverage of MH370 Makes Me Mad, and Should Make You Mad Too

Everything about the way the media has showcased the disappearance of the Malaysian plane pisses me off. It turned the global community into either sympathizers, conspiracy theorists, islamaphobes, or just upset them in general.

Today the Malaysian PM announced that there was no way that any of the passengers will be found alive, increased debris has been washing up on the Western Australian coastline and that ‘new data’ suggests it travelled so far off course and off land that there’s no way it would have had the fuel to land safely. It went down in the Southern Indian Ocean, everyone on board died, and it should go down in history as a tragedy. A mysterious one, but still a tragedy. At least a political leader actually made a concrete statement, gave some closure. Said what we all knew but didn’t want to hear, 239 people are dead.

Now here’s the part that pisses me off. This plane took off march.8, as far as the news goes, sure, let’s give them about 4-5 days to theorize and give scenarios, tops.  Instead, they played on people’s emotions with rhetoric and speculation instead of facts. It seemed like every few hours there would be ‘new data’. They released scenarios to the public that potentially shat all over the reputations of anyone on board:

• -the pilot was a political fanatic who deleted his simulator for some twisted plot  tied to justice for his political party
• -the Iranian asylum seekers with fake passports were part of some jihadist terrorist cell
• -the co-pilot was a womanizer who invited attractive white women in the cockpit to party with them and may have not been paying attention
• -Chinese separatists overtook and hijacked the plane to use for a sinister plot  
• -Pilot suicide, or passenger suicide

  

  
  

ALL NOT TRUE OR PROVEN

Secondly, the whereabouts of the plane seemed to change drastically  with every slight change in ‘new data’. People wondered and tuned in because they were told:

-The plane had swiftly changed course toward the upper bay of Thailand, then disappeared, then it was in:

•  -the Andaman Sea
•  -the Strait of Malacca
•  -the Southern Indian Ocean
•  -remote Indigenous inhabited islands off the coast of India
•  -landed in an old abandoned military airfield in Vietnam
•  -went up to N.Korea and landed in Pyongyang
•  -went through Kazakhstan into Afghanistan

 <--not accurate

Which was all bullshit, yet we were told to hang on to what the ‘new data’ suggested, so we’d wait, emotionally invest, and tune back into that media outlet to only be fed more ‘new data’ as to its whereabouts and where it went down, just as soon as they can dream up ‘new data’.  we’d be picked up by promising ‘new data’ almost every day, believing we’d all have some closure. We had build-ups like:

• -the oil slick off Vietnam
• -the eye witness account from the Chinese Oil Rigger
• -the eye witness account from a tourist at a resort in Maldives
• -the seismic activity from a Chinese Seismograph
• -the Chinese Satellite images showing ‘possible debris’
• -even Courtney Love made ‘new data’ saying she found the planenot accurate

Etc..

All fruitless, theories, non-supported by facts but rather speculation dressed up as fact to keep you on edge and tuned in. The news would invite ‘experts’ in to support these ideas that we now know to be untrue.

Of course, what good is a tragic world event without getting some political controversy in there as well?  While the so called ‘international community of 29 nations’ searched for the plane, none seemed very keen on sharing any of their data. It was a big Mexican standoff. I can’t possibly buy that not one nation didn’t know what was going on. Just because we weren’t told something doesn’t mean it’s not true. I get that nations have secrets and there’s a lot out there that we’re not supposed to know. That’s fine. I don’t need to know the secrets the government keeps, I'm not a secret agent or a spy. But I also definitely don’t need to be exposed to crocks of bullshit day after day. Lies combined with emotional investment are a sure-fire way for people to interpret those lies as fact. That’s a scary thought.

After about two weeks of the plane’s disappearance, the media seemed to run out of feasible ways to feed us ‘new data’ without us getting wise. So what do they do? They start running segments like “Let’s turn to Social Media and explore some theories circulating on the internet.” That’s right folks, the internet, where the trolls and the paranoid roam.

Then expose these fully invested people to far-out conspiracies like:

 

• -electronic weapons were on board that pulsed out the communications and then landed somewhere remote where ________ country gained access to these confidential technologies
• -plane was hijacked and flew underneath the radar shadow of another plane until it could make a remote landing
• -sucked in a black hole (yes, seriously)
• -Russia hijacked and made the plane disappear to take the media’s attention of the Crimea annexation
• -Jihadists hijacked and landed it to reuse for a Chinese version of 9/11
• -North Korea hijacked it and landed it and plans to fill it with a nuclear warhead where it will fly it, undetected to a western target
• -landed on a remote island because the pilot lost faith in humanity and wanted to start his own little Gilligan’s Island
• -China has an underwater base where it landed and the passengers are being used for scientific research
• -the MOON!

  

  
  

These were all bullshit ideas flogged through some sort of ‘trusted’ media outlets. Give me a break.

The bottom line is that 239 people are not alive any longer and many families have been ripped apart due to it. Inevitably, the media is going to milk the mourning process now to get every last rating out of this tragedy, but in my opinion that’s a lot better than any more ‘new data’.

There are such things in the world as mysteries. Sometimes things can’t be explained. This isn’t the first plane to vanish in the remote spots of planet earth, never to be seen again, and it probably won’t be the last.

To people hanging on this story hoping for a miracle, I'm glad a politician has finally given closure and announced deaths.

To the news, thank you for teaching me that ‘new data’ really usually means ‘stuff we pulled out of our ass to keep you watching’. The gross insensitivity they displayed throughout this whole process, really shows the news these days is all about ratings. Speculations and theories can be dressed up and paraded around as facts, until they’ve run out of juice and new speculations need to take their turn.

From now on, I'm going to scoff when I hear things like “news you can trust”. Get bent

My hope for you is that you don’t believe everything you’re told. In today’s media world, there’s always an agenda.

Thanks for listening to my rant. My thoughts and prayers are with people affected by this tragedy, and I hope they’re in yours too.

-Jegger

 

PS: I’ll get back to humorous posts soon, there’s just so much going on in the world lately to not address it.