As an avid news watcher it is incredible to watch how news is dispersed. The current situation of the captain on the Costa Concordia shows a shining light into the practices being perpetuated. The story starts with the ship's sinking. At first glance we see pictures of the ship and hear the terrifying accounts of what happened given by the passengers on board the doomed cruise. We get to hear the stories from as many passengers as possible. Who was doing what at the time and how each one of them survived the ordeal. The story then leads on to more stories, more pages, more web page click-throughs. As the story deepens, it moves on to the captain, where is he, what did he do? In a 'surprise' move the coast guard releases a tape of the conversation he had with the captain as the ship was sinking. It shortly transpires that whilst the conversation is occuring the captain was on board one of the lifeboats. In a somewhat heated conversation the captain is told off by the coast guard for not being on the ship. We hear a 20 second grab of the conversation they had. It turns us all aghast that the captain was in a lifeboat, not there helping rescue his passengers and thoroughly ensuring they were all safe before disembarking. Of course this brings rise to a range of stories and a pent up rage within. What the hell was the captain doing on a lifeboat? So now we get a whole range of stories that discuss what the captain's duties are. Some say a captain, not in immediate danger, must always stay with his boat, his duty being to ensure the safety of his passengers. Others say even if he was in danger he still needs to ensure the safety of his passengers first. But, everyone now believes the captain deserves life imprisonment. We avidly search out more information then the captain comes out with I fell off the boat as it lurched I tripped and fell into the water. The 20 second sound grab turns into a 30 second sound grab, starting earlier in the conversation, and, we find, as stated, the captain actually says that to the coast guard well before he launched his tirade. It seems we've wasted so much time and anger at the captain all along. Now we can understand exactly why he was in the lifeboat at the time. Seems there was no story there until they played the sound grab we all wanted to hear. They have condemned the captain, probably ruined his life and likely any chance he had of a fair trial, placing anxiety, anger and doubt in the public sphere, only because they created the news that way. They get 20 times the click-throughs than they would have by releasing the full tape in the first place. That's the way it goes with the MSM.
Although this is a tragic story I have to admit that the captain's excuse as to why he abandoned ship was at the very least original,and did make me chuckle. He claims that the ship was listing so badly that he "fell" off the ship and landed smack into a lifeboat,which conveniently was already heading towards shore.One has to give an A+ to the captain for giving the mother of all excuses.