February 04, 2003
A Nation Mourns
Not to minimise the tragic nature of the Space Shuttle's demise, but do we really need 'round-the-clock coverage of the events? Have we not seen the same shot of the astronauts smiling and waving as they enter the shuttle enough times?
And, isn't the outpouring of emotion just a tad hypocritical? Did anybody now crying his or her eyes out even know the name of a single one of the fallen heroes? Did they even know that there was a Shuttle mission in progress? I sure as fuck didn't.
American workers suffer 6,000 fatalities per year. Why no time on the evening news to recognise each of them by name?
Although events like this usually elicit unintentinally hilarious utterances from our professional talkers. On September 11, a local TV news anchor stated that, "Northgate mall is canceled." And on Saturday, a local talk radio host, in reference to the space programme, said that, "Some people think that robots should be in charge of everything."
Posted by Eddie Tews at February 4, 2003 07:23 PM
Comments
I think that it was a terrible thing that happened to the astronauts on Columbia, and I have a great deal of sympathy with their families having to deal with such a public loss.
And I also think it was a big news story - at 6pm UK time on Saturday I was logged into my work from my laptop at home to make sure that people searching the BBC site got the latest news, whether they were searching for 'shuttle', 'nasa', 'columbia' or 'colombia' [as some were].
But - this week over here we had the last episode of a major BBC documentary on "The Life Of Mammals" - a huge television piece of Natural History - that ended with David Attenborough talking about how man had evolved from the graet apes to reach for the stars. And it involved him in a shot in front of a shuttle launch-pad. And the BBC felt they had to have a continuity announcer say at the end that "The programme was made before the tragic events of the weekend".
Now, I don't understand exactly what goes into making a TV programme - but I'm pretty certain the majority of the British public were not thinking that they threw the programme together in 8 hours on a Monday afternoon. It was pretty obvious that using footage of the shuttle on the launch-pad was not meant as disrespect.
I wonder if the same courtesy will be shown when the BBC are showing military provided footage of 'smart' laser guided bombs hitting thier target - or whether the forst 7 civilian deaths in Iraq will get so much media coverage. -- Posted by: martin on February 7, 2003 05:55 PM
Wow. You even find something cynical about remembering the astronauts. Maybe a reducion in your daily espresso intake would be useful ;) -- Posted by: Richard Ames on February 9, 2003 12:02 PM
I think robots should be in charge of everything. -- Posted by: Charles E. Fromage on February 19, 2003 10:25 PM