Monday, July 30, 2007

Joe Willie On The Shrimpbox: Who's To Blame

By now you've seen all of the reports of Phoenix copter crash. Now the blame game begins.
The investigation will continue this week into Friday's collision of two TV news helicopters in Phoenix that killed four people --the pilot and videographer on choppers for KNXV-TV and KTVK-TV. At the time of the crash, a total of six different helicopters were in the air covering a Phoenix police chase of a suspect who was later apprehended.
Air traffic control experts say that in cases like Friday's, each helicopter is assigned a specific altitude to maintain, and it's up to the individual pilots to keep informing each other of where they are. Five of the six helicopters were flying for TV, the other one was a police helicopter.
And incredibly, they're talking about charging the guy the police apprehended with the deaths of the four chopper occupants. Are you kidding me? The only helicopter that should have been in the air was the police chopper. You know what killed those four people? Ratings. People just love live cop chases on TV, and TV news directors are just so happy to send up their "Eye in the Sky." I hope some TV news folks lose a lot of sleep over this one for a long time. Just my opinion.

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