On Sunday, March 30, 2014 6:59:41 AM UTC-4, Robert Green wrote:
"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message

"Robert Green" wrote:



some sort of standard that indicates that they don't put out a real

anything that happens to float past and looks like a couple extra

minutes are filled.



By all means, let's have the government license them and publish

journalistic standards . . . no, wait, that's not such a good idea

afterall.



Gee, it was really nice of you to succinctly make my point about

taking whatever floats by and mangling it until it fits what you want it

to. Never was there any mention of government intrusion (especially from

me of all people).



I just cut to the chase for you. In the final analysis, externally imposed

standards are the only ones that are effective. The desire to see

journalists act "professionally" means that there's a) a standard defined

and b) there's a way to enforce or cause journalists to adhere to that

standard. That's how we insure professional behavior from doctors, lawyers

and even massage therapists.



The competitive pressure of a free market dissolves away those standards in

the face of the reality that day old news has no value. So, to get the

"scoop" news organization now are willing to pay for interviews and accept

statements from interviewees without attempting to vet them in any way.



There used to be internal standards that you had to

meet that were imposed by your bosses, their bosses, or just plain old

peer pressure to get it right instead of merely filling up time with

whatever weirdness happens to pass by or calls looking for air time.



I'm not sure there ever were the "standards" you're talking about. The kind

of speculation you're talking about has always been with us, and it

typically gets worse when there aren't any "real" facts to be had, as in the

MH370 case. Read the new archives about Amelia Earhart. Different time but

same sort of speculative coverage in the absence of verifiable facts.



It's important to remember this isn't a "top down" process. Now, more than

ever, news organizations have a very good grasp on what their readers want

to read - you see it with almost every news site's "most emailed" or "most

read" feature. Newspapers before the internet very rarely knew what stories

people read or passed on. Now they know with excruciating detail what

interests people and what they want more of. You're just mad because it's

not representative of what you want more of. (-:



There used to be rotary phones, men used to wear hats and there was a time

when the web wasn't even a dream. Internal standards are still practiced by

some, but not many, news organizations. They're the ones that have enough

revenue to be able to afford that luxury. Not many can anymore.



Look at all the supposition that came about after the

Challenger disaster, the OK city bombing, etc. When people have

incomplete information on a newsworthy subject they resort to "what

if"

scenarios.



Pretty much makes my point. I have no problem with people doing

that, but journalists should not just pass along the latest rumor.



Oh yeah, think of the competitive advantage of saying nothing when your

competitors provide stuff that people are interested in reading, even if

it's supposition in the absence of hard facts (he says, sarcastically).



I agree with your general argument here. It's kind of a paradox
in a way. I think the media has given this story far more attention
than it deserves. CNN in particular. Some almost insignificant thing
comes out like someone says a week into this that the plane made a
"sharp turn to the left" when it first went off course, and they blow
it into major breaking news. Then they finally admit that it's unclear
if that means that it was a sudden, extreme bank turn, or just that it
was a sharp change from it's original course. We knew the latter from
day one, and even if was a steep bank turn, it's hardly major knews.
Yet they had pilots demonstrating both in a flight simulator and they
talked about if for hours.

I especially enjoyed that British buffoon they have in Australia, who's
their aviation expert. About a week ago, when the Australian Prime Minister
made an announcement while he was before pariament, he was so excited
he must have wet his pants. He was saying that for anyone who understands
Australian politics, there has to be major significance, that they've
really found something that they know must be from the plane, or the
PM wouldn't be saying that. Well, now as I suspected at the time, he
was full of BS. It's just the PM should have known better to talk about
finding something while he was before Parliament because it would be
misinterpreted by buffoons like the CNN clown.

The paradox is that if you're interested in the latest on any of this,
even I put on CNN to watch for 20 mins to see what's going on, because
they've been covering it pretty much 24/7. You just have to be able
to filter the BS from the facts, and sadly a lot of people can't do
that.



Since I first read this post I've been reading MH370 stories with an eye to

whether news organizations make it clear that what they are reporting are

not necessarily facts, but the best "guesses" we have available from the

people in a position to know something about the situation. That's why I

give reports like Chris Goodfellow's (that there was a fire) much greater

creedence than some turkey in the Malaysian government. Goodfellow's a

pilot who's "been there, done that" whereas a defense minister hasn't and

worse, yet, probably has some pretty good reasons *not* to tell the whole

truth.


The problem with Goodfellow's fire theory is that it doesn't conform
at all to most of the facts we have. I don't just take someone's conclusion
because they are a pilot. We'll get to his pilot credentials later,
but there are more commercial pilots in fact who are saying
they too believe deliberate criminal human action was the likely cause.
I've asked you these points before and I'll ask them again regarding
what Goodfellow is claiming:

"When I saw that left turn with a direct heading, I instinctively knew he was heading for an airport. He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles. The captain did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000-foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which also was closer."


When they made that left turn, the airport at Kota Bahru, with an 8000ft
runway, perectly capable of landing a 777, was about 140 miles away. It's
right on the coast. Yet they chose to fly a burning plane 175 miles farther,
all the way across Malaysia to the other coast? He just picks that
Palau Langkawi airport because
it happens to be near where the plane went by, on the other side of Malaysia.
Oh, and note that the plane didn't land there, or pass close to it,
instead it made a precise zig-zag to waypoints that left in perfectly
aligned with the flight path to
India/Middle East at 29,500 ft. It was on radar contact hundreds of miles
past the airport he claims it was going to land at.


"When I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and searched for airports in proximity to the track toward the southwest."

The question isn't to find airports 350 miles away from where the
fire was detected that just happen to be along whatever flightpath
it took. The question is where is the closest airport that can
land the plane. That's Kota Bahru, about 150 miles. They could
have landed there in 25 mins.


"What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on George (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. You will find it along that route-looking elsewhere is pointless."

If it was on autopilot, then either it would maintain it's current
heading and speed indefinitely or it would be following waypoints.
We know it wasn't just on one heading, it made that precise zig-zag
over the Straits, *after* it had passed the closest point it ever
got to the airport he claims it was trying to land at. That left
it aligned with the flight paths to India/ME.
And unless Inmarsat is full of baloney, it made at least one major
heading change again to get to the South Indian Ocean. So again,
that is consistent with someone either flying it at the controls or
else having entered those waypoints in the autopilot. How are
either of those consistent with his fire theory?

"There was a well known accident in Nigeria of a DC8 that had a landing gear fire on takeoff. Once going, a tire fire would produce horrific, incapacitating smoke."

Tires are instrumented to flag pressure out of range, the brakes
are instrumented to measure temperature, etc. It's hard to conceive
that a properly inflated tire is going to catch fire or that even
if it does, that they are not going to start seeing alarms go off
indicating brakes over temp, tire deflating, etc. Along with this
theory, I've heard "experts" claiming that the 777 was fully loaded
with fuel, heavy on takeoff, etc. That is pure BS, it had less than
half it's max fuel and was nowhere near max takeoff weight. But it
feeds the "hot tire" theory, so let's just throw that BS in.

The plane is also outfitted
with smoke/fire detection systems, halon fire systems to put out fires.
The probability of a smoldering tire going unnoticed for 40 mins and then
the first indication of that isn't a fire alarm, it's the sudden loss of
transponders, all electrical systems, no mayday, whatever is about .000001%
And the probability of said fire just happening to occur within a
couple mins of being handed off from Malaysian ATC and never contacting
Vietnam ATC, ie exactly at the poing where it's ideal to deliberatly
make the plane disappear is about .0000000001%.




"Yes, pilots have access to oxygen masks, but this is a no-no with fire."

Says who? He's the first one I've heard ever say anything like that.
Unless the cockpit itself is on fire, it's hard to imagine that the
tiny amount of oxygen in those masks is going to make a difference to
the alleged flaming tire. But, better to go unconscious I guess.


And who exactly is this Chris Goodfellow?

"Chris Goodfellow has 20 years experience as a Canadian Class-1 instrumented-rated pilot for multi-engine planes. "

From that it appears that he is just a private pilot with a multi-engine
IFR rating. Is he even jet rated? A commercial pilot? It's very possible
that all he's flown is a small twin engine plane and he's never flown
a commercial airliner.