Re: CBS covers the news big-time

[mwaters@mail.wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Larry Weil wrote:
>In a case of gross incompetence, KMOX radio in St. Louis (near where I'm
>now at my parent's house in West St. Louis County) repeatedly reported this
>morning that it was a flight that left from Boston.  Only after a CBS
>network report with the correct info was broadcast did they then get it
>right.

        I was cringing at the errors made in the reporting in the first
hours after the crash. Two were really big.

        The biggest was the report, being used around 7-8-9 a.m., that the
plane had made an emergency landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California
just after leaving LAX, then taken off again for NY. Various reporters
filled a bunch of minutes of airtime speculating about the meaning and
significance of this item. Then, as explained on WBZ radio (I'm not sure if
it was explained by the WBZ anchor or from the network), it turned out that
someone somewhere had seen information that the plane had stopped at an
airport designated as EWW, and jumped to the pathetic, incompetent
conclusion (my characterization) that this meant Edwards. Of course, the
plane had landed at and taken off from Newark--airport code EWW--on the
westbound trip from Cairo when JFK was fogged.
        I hate to say that I believe this goof was blamed on the AP, my
one-time employer, although perhaps the AP picked it up from someone else.
I'd certainly like to think that if the AP were involved at all with this
report that such was the case. The AP sometimes looks bad when its member
newspapers and broadcasters issue erroneous reports. The AP may cover
itself by writing, "Such and such TV is reporting that . . ." but often
that gets edited out when the copy is broadcast somewhere else, especially
in a situation like this where anchors are ad libbing and reading sections
of many different pieces of copy.

        The other serious goof I heard was that a mayday call was known to
have been made from the plane. As far as I know now, this is not correct.
When this was being reported over and over again I never heard an
attribution as to who said this was the case or where and by whom the
mayday was heard. It sounded dubious to me when it was being reported.
There were no details. It was like so much of the so-called news in the
1990s--it seems like it was basically a rumor. I also never heard or saw
later on any explanation of where this report came from or who first put it
out.

        There also were repeated reports by Sunday afternoon that "some
bodies" had been (take  your pick) spotted or recovered. As far as I know,
this was incorrect, as only one body had been seen and then recovered by
the Maritime Academy ship that first found the wreckage.