As MH370 mystery deepens, so does our fascination

comments     Andy Goldberg, dpa     Published     Updated

MH370 Television viewers whose main source of news is CNN probably could write a thesis by now about the intricate details of the ‘Mystery of Flight 370', as the network calls it, from all

they’ve learned from the network’s reporting.

If they are interested in other major world events, however, they would likely be lost for words.

For CNN, the pioneer of round-the-clock news coverage, the crisis in Crimea, the latest climate change report and the spiraling tensions in Korea are unwelcome intrusions into its near wall-to-wall programming about airliner that went missing March 8 with 239 people on board.

The need for endless coverage of the missing jet has meant a lot of on-screen blathering, breathless reporting from Asian airports, ships involved in the search of the Indian Ocean and endless computer simulations. The network even tried to rent a Boeing 777 for its coverage, before settling for the use of a 777 flight simulator.

Yet the strategy has been ratings gold for the cable news pioneer. For years CNN had been falling behind rivals like Fox News and NBC News. But viewership in the key 25-54 age demographic more than doubled in March since the aircraft vanished.

“It’s an incredible mystery full of human drama, with an international element,” a senior CNN executive told the New York Times on Monday. “Anything international plays into our hands because we have more reporters to deploy all over the world.”

Clearly, millions of people in the US remain intrigued about the distant mystery, even if the purists of the journalistic professions whine about the repetitive nature of the coverage and the blurring lines between news and reality TV.

Yet the fascination with the prurient, strange and inexplicable go back to the roots of the news industry in the 16th century, explains historian Andrew Pettegree in his recent book, The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself.

The very first newspapers in the late 1500s were filled with news of earthquakes, floods and grizzly crimes, as well as beguiling mysteries of strange celestial sightings and freakish animals.

“News became part of the entertainment industry,” Pettegree writes of the advent of the first newspapers. “What could be more entertaining than the tale of some catastrophe in a far-off place, or a grisly murder?”

Little has changed. Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, regards the Flight 370 story as a perfect storm of TV coverage, “a compelling mystery that we’ve been primed for by decades of fiction”.

The case also echoes the hit TV series Lost , about the adventures of plane passengers marooned on an undiscovered island. It also plays into much older mysteries such as the Bermuda Triangle, not to mention speculation about black holes and possible terrorist acts, Thompson told dpa .

Distinctly modern twist

Yet in addition to playing in to our age-old fascinations with death, danger and supernatural phenomena, the Flight 370 mystery carries a distinctly modern twist.

How can it be that in the hyper-connected age of total surveillance and global positioning satellites can a commercial airliner vanish without a trace?

“When the connection is lost it’s terrifying,” noted New York Times writer Farhad Manjoo.

Notwithstanding these explanations, even Thompson is surprised at how successfully CNN has retained viewers so long after the story first broke.

“You would think that more and more people would say, ‘there’s no news; there’s nothing happening’,” he said. “But the fact is the numbers are still way higher. Rationally you’d think they can’t continue.”

- dpa



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