The American Prospect offers up criticism of the media's (unsurprising) relentless coverage of the Columbia disaster.
The network and cable channels covered the tragedy nonstop. Most of the dailies went on page after page after page -- the puzzle of what caused the disaster, the human-interest aspect, the anguish of a failed mission, the bizarre debris falling from the sky, the reaction of the great and the humble. This was all newsworthy, even riveting, but only up to a point. [Robert Kuttner, "Hero Worship" TAP Web Feature 02.05.2003]
The article goes on to talk about the lack of criticism of the genuine usefulness of manned missions. Few experiments done on manned missions, for example, seldom get published in the first-rate scientific journals. I personally think that we should continue pushing out into space, but there has to be genuine purpose. There needs to be a plan, such as getting back to the moon (and having a good reason to do so) or going to Mars - a real roadmap that NASA and other space agencies can stick to. Or, funding and research should point itself in the direction of commercial space "tourism", with genuine competition to find new ways of getting in to and back from space.
My own disgruntlement with the relentless media coverage lies in their amazing ability to think they've solved the problem of "what's going on" or "what went wrong". The "DC Area Sniper" story last year was a prime example - the media coverage was disproportionate to the event (on average, the sniper(s) killed four people a week during that time. At the same time, there were seven homicides on average per week inside Washington DC itself - what makes a death more noble that it happened in the parking lot of a large suburban grocery store instead of a small inner-city market?). And during the sniper situation, the Media swarmed all over themselves with their "smoking white van" theory. It was even worse watching supposed journalists ask an investigator "so can you tell us more than has been released?" and getting the answer "no, not at this time. I can not do that", and then having the journalist ask questions for the next five minutes that the man has already said he would not give an answer to. It was obvious that the reporter was handed her cue cards and told "keep this guy on the air," not "find out what's really going on". Now, we have the smoking missing tiles and smoking falling debris. Could that be the cause of the Columbia disaster? Sure it could. And the media has already made up its mind that it is, regardless of any pure outcome. They're falling over themselves trying to find former astronauts to tow the party line that manned space flight is a worthy cause (it is, to an extent; we could be doing more with it), and other talking heads to be slightly cynical (or outright crazy) to keep the proper patriotic vision alive.
Here is the broader concern: We live in an era when democracy is eroding, when dialogue between leaders and citizens is closer to one-way spectacle than the deliberation of a free people. The extreme valorization of the space shuttle and the choreographed pageantry of, say, the recent State of the Union speech seem disconcertingly of a piece.
Meanwhile, fewer people vote, fewer have time for school board meetings, yet we seem to have plenty of time to watch spectacle on TV. You can sense a drift to something not quite totalitarian but far from Jeffersonian. [Robert Kuttner, "Hero Worship"]