I was going to write a post about disaster porn — specifically, the CNN wall-to-wall coverage of Germanwings Airbus A320 flight which crashed in the southern French Alps yesterday, taking 150 souls.  I was going to write about the aching narrative they repeat over and over again, and the strained effort they make to come up with a different “angle” (“Coming up, what is the black box anyway, and why is it called ‘black’?”), and the parade of experts who speculate and speculate when we all know the facts will eventually come out in due time following an investigation.

But the thing is, I’m guilty of watching it.  Or at least…. of being interested in it.  After all, before I went into law, I majored in engineering psychology (also known as ergonomics), which is the parent field of man-machine design and the catastrophic failure thereof.  For a while there, I toyed with wanting a career at FEMA or the NTSB.  So my interest is academic.

But CNN and the other news outlets don’t really cater to that, if only because the cause of the crash is certainly unknowable at this point (even the guest experts are saying that).  So why is this on the news so much?