invested in these people being alive they may make the evidence fits sort of the lost scenario, they re somewhere on an island okay. that s understandable because it makes us less anxious. is there anything positive about this kind of coverage? we ve been describing the risks or dangers, but what are the positive attributes? something to be said for the fact that we are all sharing or fears and anxiety through this sustained media coverage? the only positive is there are probably some people, they re the people who like to watch horror movies, et cetera, where they get an excitement from watching something that s actually quite terrifying and yet it s not happening to them. so it s safe for them, they re just the viewer, but they get the thrill. what happens if there s never an answer in this particular case? how would people deal with something like that? i think it s very difficult. the idea that people can vanish
really discovered in a powerful way the audience wants wall-to-wall coverage and rewards that with huge numbers. when you know your audience wants that, that s a balance then you have to walk. of course the o.j. simpson trial was a mystery but of a different kind. court cases are a mystery just like this is a mystery right now unfolding before our eyes. i think, brian, that s so important for us to realize that what we ve got here in and why this story is compelling, unbelieve human interest and human concern, tragedy, 239s souls, somewhere, lost, we don t know. there is the aviation story. there is the national security story. there is the terrorism story if there ses that. the aviation story. we all fly. i sat down yesterday for breakfast in new york city and i m talking to a guy who has nothing to do with the news business and starts telling me what he thinks happens because he has interest in aviation and flies. right. so that s story, that mystery connects on all these com
week now. the ratings have been higher than they aare for cnn. which tells me viewers do care about this story. is there such a thing as too much coverage about a story like this. yes, there. are we there? maybe. this is where the this is the rub. this is the tension, the conflict. it s what you say, it s how you say it, it s how much you say it, and it s how loud you say it. we call that proportionality. the big danger in cable television and big danger always confronting cnn and it s confronted cnn since cnn went on the air and startd doing 24-hour news is how loud to shout, how much to do this, how much breaking news is really breaking news and how you convey to your audience this is a huge story, everybody is interested, we re going to live on this, go 24/7 washlgs to wall. i m dating myself but when we had the o.j. simpson trial and went wall to wall with that. that is the first time cnn
connectivity. millions of people have been fluid to it. at times this week cnn s ratings have been able double what they usually are. web traffic for a wide variety of news sites has been way up. many people are watching for hours at a time including me. i found myself mess morized by the coverage, despite the fact that we still have no answers. or maybe because we have no answers. but what does it mean when we re watching television for hours on end and what accounts for the heavy levels of interest in this story right now? let s ask my next guest, psychiatrist gail salts. thank you for joining me. my pleasure. what s the number one reason why so many people are focused on this, almost obsessed with this case? it s terrifying, the idea of a plane going down, and if it s a mechanical failure or for sort of a natural disaster, we have no control over that. but if there s somebody that a,
responsibility obviously to the audience but also the nature of the story itself. i think the most important thing when you re sitting in that chair and it s tough is to keep in your head what you know, what you don t know, what s a legitimate question and what s a wild out there question and how you bring the audience into that process so that you re sorting through that. all right. so in the case of this jet, was it terrorism, a lithium ion battery that blew it out, was the oxygen down so everybody lost consciousness? how long did it fly. did it crash in the ocean, land on an island some place, is it still out there. some of these questions are way out there, and i think what you have to do when you re sitting in that chair, when you re bringing the audience with you, is be very transparent about it. and bring them into that questioning process, really directly so they re part of it. people have been talking ability the type of coverage in this case a lot of speculation, but the am