IS ACCIDENT REPORTING MAKING US ALL CRAZY?

If an aviation accident happens, say, 1000 times a year or about three times a day, is it worth reporting as news? This is the calculus on aviation accidents, which we report on within AFRICAN PILOT.

When the accident is a high-profile crash with a large number of fatalities or it makes the network news, we feel compelled to publish a report because our readers expect it, or so we think. We think this because occasionally when we do not run such a story, we will receive an e-mail or two asking why not. If the accident has video, we are almost certain to run it because being honest videos drive the clicks. Readers vote with their keyboards and that drives the editorial decision making. This, taken together with the established trend of online and social media sources offering instant analysis before the wreckage cools, I feel this creates a kind of psychosis about true risk and a degree of misplaced fear.

Short of a well-designed psychological survey, there is no way to measure this, but the rising trend of accident reporting, even as the number of accidents declines may be taking a wider toll in scaring people away from aviation. The publishing of actual accident pictures has been heavily criticised and within APAnews, I have stopped showing accident pictures and simply placed a picture of the aircraft type with a note 'not the accident aircraft."