The Mary Celeste was a Canadian merchant ship found abandoned in 1872. The entire crew disappeared and there were no clues as to why the crew would abandon the ship with food on tables in the galley and personal effects and valuable all left behind and all in place. So we have no idea where the crew of the Mary Celeste is. We have no idea why they abandoned a perfectly sea worthy vessel that was under sail and headed to Gibraltar.

It’s not really a matter of whether or not CNN is reporting the news. Because the fact is they are reporting the news. CNN does get sidetracked reporting other news worthy stories every few hours. But they spend the vast majority of the day immersed in the incidentals and minutiae of the airline disappearance and they copiously follow rumors and conspiracy theories regarding the plane including “black holes” and “ufo abductions”.

At some point, the story of the Mary Celeste faded and we all had to go on with our lives. The problem with CNN’s non stop coverage of the missing plane is that they are ostensibly a news organization that has abdicated that role to the pursuit of ratings. Now ratings are fine, and in fact ratings are the underpinning of the economic model. The more eyes on the screen, the more they can charge their advertisers.

I get all of that. At the same time few Americans have an understanding on why the Ukraine and Russia are at odds. It would be great if CNN covered the long tempestuous and bloody history of that diamond shaped peninsula in the Black Sea. Instead of discussing the inner workings of a black box at the bottom of the ocean, maybe CNN could talk about the pro European Union government that the US helped put into power in the Ukraine and why that rubbed Putin the wrong way. Maybe they could discuss the history of the Black Sea and the Silk Road and how the Black Sea represents a major destination on the trading network that it once represented. Maybe CNN could put reporters in the Ukraine and cover the Military training they are doing to ready themselves for warfare. Perhaps CNN could cover the different weapon systems or discuss the power of both armies. Now that would be interesting.

The United States does not have a means of putting astronauts into space anymore. We outsource that to the Soyuz team in Khazakstan. We have an American in the International Space Station and no way to retrieve him now that NASA has decided, or someone has decided that the NASA contracts and the ISS is way to strike back at Russia.

It would sure be great if the news agencies were more interested in the integrity of news reporting and less obsessed with click throughs and revenue streams. CNN’s singular coverage of the plane is a sort of public abdication to the dollar as the goal. What’s troubling is that they don’t seem to really see the irony of this obsessive coverage of a single event which will probably have no impact on the lives of the people they “serve”.

It’s time to move on.