The difference between News and Speculation. (Malaysian Flight MH370)

What I do in this blog is not news. That is made clear by the distinct lack of supporting information I usually offer and that fact half of what I write about is merely my opinion. For a story to truly be "News" it is required to contain noteworthy information on a recent event or change. While this was true for the initial disappearance of flight MH370, it has been far from the case since.

The story of flight MH370 is in reality a very simple one, given what we actually know. A Malaysian Airlines flight and its 239 passages has gone missing as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Communication with the plane was lost at around 2.40am on 8th March over the South China sea and was never reestablished. No wreckage or telling signs of the plane have so far been discovered.

These facts were rapidly established in the immediate aftermath of the planes disappearance, yet in the 11 days since news organisations around the world have been updating their viewers on the situation with constant updates and breaking "news" on the case.  The problem is the story has yet to develop.  

News outlets require viewers. They are no different to any business in this sense, they succeed when more people are using their product than their competitors. This requires news agencies in the world of rolling 24-hour news to take one of two main stances, try and be the most thorough or try and be the quickest. The uptake of the internet as a primary source of news for many means that journalists often have to be the later. When it is so easy to share a story of twitter or any other number of social networking sites the reasons for this become all the more apparent.

In the case of MH370, pressure to deliver that breakthrough peace of granted what is a mysterious story has led to a compromise of the word "News", for a consent to speculate. Be it stories on passports, aeroplane handling or the captain's distate for cuban food (asinine, but you get my point) everything and anything has been reported on a story with no more facts that those which I presented earlier.

For some reason the development of the internet and 21st Century news broadcasting has meant that it is unacceptable to just report that a story has seen no updates. Concocting a web of half-truths and conjecture to distort and pervert a story is acceptable, because, well, then at least there's always something "new" to say.

Get it?

Until then.

Sources:

http://www.heavy.com/news/2014/03/malaysian-airlines-flight-mh370-beijing-missing/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26644085