Maybe the issue with the state police being behind the journalists needs some policy evaluation.
If an immediate ID can’t be made it would be prudent to look up the N number (just like the journalists) and immediately track down that address in an effort to aid the investigation. What would be wrong with the state police simply saying that a plane registered to their name / address was in an accident and they were gathering information. Most of the time they’d get their ID right then. Just seems like a better timeline.
The cops who came to the incident scene I was at earlier this year had absolutely no clue how to handle an aircraft accident until the brother of the Sheriff showed up, and they’re both kids of a former airport manager.
What they did know how to do was direct traffic, wrote down eyewitness notes, and make sure the pilot was seen by EMS.
No offense to them but they were clueless beyond that. They were happy I was a CFI and a witness so I could write down what I saw for FAA. Then they called FAA and waited for a few hours for them to show.
I suspect the only person who would know what to do with a dead pilot would have been the Coroner and staff. They would have directed the Sheriff or his brother to handle a notification and that could have taken many hours, if one of them wasn’t available in a rural county. If the Denver press got wind of a fatal out here, they’d absolutely beat a rural Sheriff to the notification.
That said, I have a number of friends who are lifers in the journalism biz who would have found the address and then called the Sheriff directly and told him to come over there and do it before they’d ever knock on the door. They know who’s job things are and aren’t into making rural Sheriff’s mad. They know that’ll just come back around and hit them square in the azz the next time they need access to the Sheriff or his assistance.
There are no absolutes. You think kids come out of journalism school wanting to knock on the doors of parents who lost their kid? You think cops took the job to give speeding tickets? There are crap parts of every job. But you do it because there are great parts.
Like I said, know some real old timers in the press. They would just notify the Sheriff and let him do his job first. They wouldn’t be on the doorstep. There’s no story there anyway other than filming someone grieving. And that’s not a story.
The way it works is we can only report what we’re told. If you don’t talk to the press, they can’t report your point of view.
Oh right. The news article I was interviewed for was written long before my interview. I knew where they were headed and it wasn’t too embarrassing to be involved in it, but the person who contacted me who said they needed a flight instructor to interview already knew the story angle, too.
And reporters are really not the problem. It’s the editors who cut the story to fit a viewpoint and the owners who only hire publishers that fit their views, and publishers who only hire editors that fit the views of the owner. The reporters are just doing their jobs gathering info and putting a story together.
Most of our young reporters (like the one that interviewed me) are cutting and editing their own scripts these days around here. Call it competition or whatever but the traditional “newsroom” is gone. They’re shooting, interviewing, writing, editing, and cutting their own. The kid who interviewed me immediately went from shooting our interview to shooting B-roll because the sun was setting and he only had about 45 minutes to edit the whole thing, do the rest of the voice over, and turn it in. Probably over a multi-carrier cellular data combiner box. I doubt he had time to make it back to the studio before air.
The really old friend who’s not far from retirement shot the video of the service dog having puppies at Tampa International airport on Friday. He joked, “This one is going to go viral! Super cute stuff man!” when I talked to him on Friday afternoon. He’s the old school crowd and still just works the camera, but the younger reporters don’t get a camera guy.
The other guy I know in the biz locally is a roving camera and on air personality doing mostly mobile weather shots and occasionally crime when he sees stuff going down or gets dispatched to it. He knows all the cops, good and bad, and they know him, and they usually grin briefly in his shots from across the street on top of a parking garage or wherever they notice him doing. They know he got past their police line with basic geometry and then they come over and tell him he’s a dick and he brings them coffee occasionally.
Hanging with TV workers has strange side effects though. I met the Tampa guy once at a breakfast place and didn’t realize it was right across from City Hall. All of a sudden while we’re talking he says, “Hold that thought, come meet the Chief of Police.” as he turns and walks toward the corner of the block. “Hey Chief, good morning! Allow me to introduce an old friend from Denver...” then they chatted about various news items for a few minutes, on and off the record. I just stood there with no expression on my face because I wanted to laugh. Who knew I’d be meeting the Tampa Police Chief that morning just passing through as a tourist?
It’s definitely not the pristine Fourth Estate or any of that idealistic crap though. Everybody knows everybody. They all know “the rules” and they know which job is theirs and which is someone else’s.
NONE of my old friends in that biz would do a notification without a courtesy call to the Sheriff or the Chief seeing if they wanted to do it first. Not even if competing stations showed up at the house at the same time. They MIGHT do an outdoor shot from down the block of the house saying they’re there and awaiting information from the Sheriff or Chief if they absolutely had to. “We’re here, we’re covering it, more at the next newscast or as it breaks...”
