Thursday – 05 February 2015
While at lunch, the restaurant in which I was eating had televisions tuned to CNN. One of the items that they covered was the crash of TransAsia GE235.  That’s news. I was good with that.

What I wasn’t as good with was the running… and re-running… and re-re-running… of the crash footage, taken from the vehicle behind the taxi that got clipped as the plane crashed.

Yes, I realize that it’s probably the only footage you have, but seriously, do we need to see it eleventy-seven times over the course of two minutes?! No, I think not.

Tell the story.
Show the clip.
Give additional information about the story, if any.
Maybe, maybe, show the clip one more time.
Move on to the next news item.

To be honest, it reminded me of the way news stations kept airing footage of the Challenger explosion in 1986. I remember being in class at the time of the actual explosion, but walking down one of the hallways where a TV was on – shuttle launches were still pretty big deals – and Peter Jennings being on the air saying:

We want to show you… well, we don’t want to show you, but we are going to show you… footage of [the explosion]…

…then showing a 20-30 second clip of the event.

And, how often the clip kept being shown after that…

The same thing with the WTC collapse.

I’m not denying the events’ newsworthiness; I just wonder how often people need to be shown and re-shown (horrific) events.

/soapbox

Namaste.