Know-nothings spew non-news nonstop

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Nobody knew Andreas Lubitz before March 24, when the 27-year-old pilot deliberately flew a Germanwings airplane into a mountain in the French Alps, killing himself and all 149 other people on board. Nobody knew him, aside from some family and friends, and nobody understood how and why the tragedy unfolded, but that didn’t stop news pundits from complicating the mystery with misinformation and unfounded speculation.

In the first moments after news of the crash, Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC postulated that officials would be looking into the “ethnicity” and politics of the pilot. Hold on there, Mika, I thought. Why jump to a terrorist connection or speculate that “ethnicity” could be a clue? We knew nothing at that point except that the plane had crashed.

She wasn’t alone. Other news people speculated quite recklessly before there was any hard news about the tragedy. And when the news did trickle out, it was incomplete: French officials and Lufthansa officials said that Lubitz, who was in the copilot’s seat, locked the pilot out of the cockpit and intentionally crashed the plane, despite pleas from co-workers and cries from passengers. In the following days, it was revealed that a shredded doctor’s note was found in Lubitz’s home, a letter excusing him from work the day of the tragedy.

More speculation on air: Was it mental illness? Suicide? A physical ailment? Something else entirely? Had he suffered a breakdown after his girlfriend left him?

I understand why the media talk the story up, down and sideways before they have any reliable information: They have to feed the appetite for 24/7 news. Within minutes, every network had “experts,” from crash analysts to psychologists to Sanjay Gupta speculating on what might have happened before there was any real evidence available.

The BBC reported that Lubitz was treated for depression in 2009 and later deemed healthy to fly. The fact is that most airlines do not undertake rigorous mental health checks of their pilots after initial screenings and licensing. Such checks would be helpful, but they’re certainly not foolproof.

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