Letter to "The NAtional" on CBC

Last nights ‘National” broadcast (27/02/06) dedicated a great deal of time to a story on air safety in Canada.

While the issue surrounding delayed approvals for mandatory safety equipment on Canadian airplanes was interesting, the entire story seemed to be centered on little more than fear mongering.

The story was peppered with words like "potential" when describing awaiting air disasters. The story ran graphic news reels of air disasters involving hundreds of people on commercial jets, and yet the apparent problem at the centre of the story involved a lack of safety equipment on small personal aircraft.

You used alarming statistics like “200 near misses” in a year, but barley mention that is worldwide involving all types of aircraft. You carefully spaced out the “tens of thousands of flights” in Canada statistic because when a viewer put the 200 near misses worldwide against Canada’s miniscule percentage of worldwide air traffic, the stats would be laughable. The clinging to straws continued when a 5 year old mid air collision was sited involving a personal aircraft and helicopter as a key example of the “potential” problem.

One minute you are insinuating that a disaster involving an Air Canada jet over Toronto is imminent and the next minute you backhandedly explaining that the real danger involves single engine pipers and Cessnas piloted by inexperienced pilots over remotes areas of Canada.

I really should not be surprised in this day and age where speculative journalism has replaced news on actual events, but it seems every time I see a story like this I get angry. Flying is scary enough for a lot of people without you reporting potential dangers that don’t really exist.

Stick to reporting events, don’t try and make news.