Last week, an airliner departing from New York City struck a flock of geese and was forced to land in the Hudson River. All the passengers survived. Though told adequately in just two sentences, this story became the focal point of international attention for days after it broke. It commanded front pages from Los Angles to London, earning articles even in esteemed papers that claim to focus on the issues, such as the Wall Street Journal and The Economist. The New York Times ran two front-page articles, the second bearing the cheery title: “After the Splash, Nerves, Heroics and Comedy.” And of course, it was subject to endless hours of discussion on cable, Internet and radio. Even NPR spent a considerable portion of their airtime talking about it. The day after the crash, I searched in vain the for a daily news source that did not feature it as the main headline. Perhaps I might have known better.
The crash itself was relatively inconsequential. Certainly, it was not the first time a pilot has had to ditch. And though remarkable in its low mortality, it is not the sort of story one would remember after a month. But its significance lies in the other events that occurred that day, the events that it obscured. As the media spent the subsequent few days in a frenzy, actual news did occur, but it was lost in the endless passenger interviews, crash reconstructions and heaping praise for that skillful pilot. For the sake of comparison, however, it is worth considering a few of the topics shoved aside that week to make room for what amounted to a glorified human interest piece.
Congress voted to release the second half of the massively unpopular bank bailout the day after the crash along with a tacit admission that the first had no effect, while President Barack Obama unveiled his own stimulus plan the same afternoon. Taken together, they speak for almost $2 trillion of taxpayer funds. The public vocally and unanimously opposed the original bailout. Its initial failure in the House was due in no small part to the flood of calls received by the Congressional switchboard in protest of a free money giveaway.
Only the promise that most of the money would not be spent, that it would, in fact, be an investment upon which the taxpayer would profit calmed the public. Now it seems those promises were hogwash. The banks swallowed the first half without blinking, and they are lining up for their second helping. Yet for the hundreds of billions already spent, we do not appear to be noticeably better off than before. November and December were some of the worst months yet, seeing more than a million jobs lost between them and the Dow Jones industrial average hardly recovering from its nadir in October. The necessity of releasing the rest of the bailout so soon should have set off a fierce debate as to the efficacy of the plan, particularly after several reports alleging that the banks were not using the funds to lend but to hoard. The debate did not occur, and the time was spent, instead, discussing the finer points of emergency aviation.
Likewise, with Obama’s stimulus plan: For two months he had teased the public with speeches and documents promising 2.5 million jobs, then 3 million, then four. But when the unveiling hour finally arrived, it found itself upstaged by that fateful flight. One might have expected some sort of response, especially as the size of the plan implies the wholesale printing of U.S. dollars, but none could be found.
The crash provided a short prelude to the media circus surrounding Obama’s inauguration. Taken by themselves, these events are innocuous enough, a few uplifting stories in a sea of depression. But when seen as part of a trend, they present a picture far more sinister. The crisis we face and the decisions being taken to correct it are of critical importance to every American. It is cowardly, if not openly dishonest, for our newspapers to inflate the magnitude of a nonevent at the expense of stories that actually matter to us. The next time a plane crashes, who knows what might be ignored?
Pavan Vangipuram is a State News guest columnist and chemical engineering senior. Reach him at vangipu1@msu.edu.
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