The Columbia Plane Crash: The Focus on the Football Team

The Columbia plane crash, yesterday, is all over the news at the moment. Of course, 71 people died in this tragic accident. But in terms of values of mass media, there is more to it than only a tragedy.

Being negative and unexpected, the mass media have, due to many plane crashes in the last three years, quite a lot of footage on plane crashes, their causes, and experts on the topic who they can interview. But mostly, it attracts human interests. The personalization of this news feed is extremely high as everyone flies and especially these random accidents raise pity in the reader for innocent people losing their lives. Moreover, you think “This could have been me on the plane!” No matter where a plane departs, people start to question the security of flying and see themselves endangered. But there are hopes raised, too, as some news focus on the survivors. This gives the news a slightly positive undertone, thus, making advertisements possible. The advertiser, therefore, can still place the add next to the article without fearing a connection to negative feelings.

But there is also another aspect of news’ value that is important in this story: Meaningfulness. Having a whole 1st league football team on board and one of the team members surviving, the news went crazy over this. The other victims were forgotten pretty soon and everything was about the football club on the way to their championship, losing their lives in this tragic accident. The guardian portrays that very well:

The football club is of interest for all football nations and for investors, thus, more important for the news than an average person dying on a plane crash. Obviously. Behind these anonymous people there might be a story but there is no money. So, easy decision for the editors to determine to focus especially on the football team.