Since the 1991 Gulf War, CNN has been my "go to" cable network for breaking news. There is no lack of major news gripping the globe these days, yet lately CNN has been almost entirely devoted to wall to wall coverage of the disappearance and search for Malaysia Air Flight 370. Every major issue surrounding this story is certainly worthy of exploring, but when did endless hypothetical opinions based on very limited information become the basis of "breaking news" while so many other stories get left off the air? The Ukraine crisis continues unabated and the Washington state landslide claims dozens of lives while the overwhelming majority of news time goes to Flight 370. CNN has some great anchors, and I can't imagine they seriously think they can fill time with questions about whether Flight 370 was swallowed by a black hole without pressure from above to do so. If this is a way to recoup lost ratings, it's a flawed strategy.
To be "fair and balanced", Fox News has not set the bar high on this story either. Although other stories get more equally in the mix, they can't even air what little is known about the Malaysia Air disappearance without attacking President Obama. One anchor's understandable call for patience on getting to the facts on this story was totally shattered by some red meat for their fundamentalist Christian viewers that "it took thousands of years to find Noah's Ark." No, Fox, they never found it. MSNBC has been pretty good at perspective, but I can't consistently look to them for breaking news when they spend half their weekends running prison documentaries and their 6:00pm slot has the most polarizing host on TV: Reverend Al Sharpton. I find his yelling at the camera hard to take, even for my liberal views.
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