The journalist’s challenge

I’m reading an interesting article by a pilot who frequently writes for Salon about misinformed reporting around the Air France flight disappearance. His criticisms are somewhat technical, like the following:

Next we have a Reuters piece from Miguel Lo Bianco. He writes, “Pilots often slow down when entering stormy zones to avoid damaging the aircraft, but reducing speed too much can cause an aircraft’s engines to stall.” The danger of flying too slowly is not an engine stall, but an aerodynamic stall — that is, a loss of lift over the wings.

I don’t know whether it is material that readers know the stall is aerodynamic, though it does seem at least worth trying to get right. The following criticism, though, seems less pedantic:

But the big gaffe is the reporter’s reasoning for why a Europe-bound plane would stay “overland” along the Brazilian coastline for so long. This has nothing to do with safety reasons. It’s merely the shortest distance.

I think this needs to be reported correctly, but I think there is a  trade that we make as a public, and that our media outlets make, by having to report expediently and constantly. It happens when journalists do not have enough time to write a story that involves some steady concentration. I know that my biggest hang-up when I’m writing stories is that I’m getting something wrong. Then, I spend quarter-hours or half-hours on checking the veracity of an assertion–because that is what these mis-reportings often are, assertions.

Reporters are outsiders, which often makes them look hopefully in-the-dark to people who have been reported on but makes them necessary for everyone else: because it is much more difficult for insiders to communicate a story–because they know more of the nuances and complications–then it is for people who are hearing it for the first time.

So I understand Smith’s desire for the reporting to be less misinformed. But I also understand the reporter’s pressure to report the story and make it reasonably easy to understand.