There has long been a debate in this country about whether the media is now more about entertainment than information, preferrs scandal to substance and creates drama to hold viewership. I don’t know if any of you saw the emergency landing of a JetBlue A320 plane with landing gear problems in Los Angeles the other day but it has raised some interesting questions about how what people watch on the media affects their attitude towards what is happening.

Ordinarily this would be an academic question because it would not include the people actually involved in the particular crisis du jour but in this case there is a significant difference. JetBlue provides all passengers with seatback satellite TV transmissions, uncensored, on all its flights. Which means that the passengers on that plane were able to watch, in real time, live video of their aircraft circling over Los Angeles, gear and flaps down, as it burned off fuel before making its emergency landing at LAX. And all of it was accompanied by breathless prose from the cable news anchors and endless debate with a variety of hired experts discussing just what horrible catastrophe and death might befall these poor passengers if something went wrong during the landing.

Unfortunately the questions that are being asked about this ability to view your own personal crisis unfold on international television don’t raise the most important points of all, that is: to what extent do the needs of cable news outlets to best each other in the speculation and drama department outweigh the need to actually and factually report what is happening? I’ve been furious at this need for speculation in the media for more than a decade (I swear, Chris Matthews’ favorite word is if) but in this instance it became more than just an irritant it became a potential threat to lives and the safety of the plane, and its passengers and crew.

While the media are endlessly speculating on what the viewing of the video will do to passenger behavior they are avoiding any and all mention of their own verbiage and the impact it could have, which I submit is far more serious than simply watching the video. But questions about that will sadly never get asked.