Why are Americans obsessed with missing plane?

[FarCenter]

PERTH, Australia - From the disappearances of aviator Amelia Earhart to labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa, there's just something about a good mystery that Americans find too tantalizing to resist. Perhaps that's why the saga of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has continued to rivet the country long after people elsewhere have moved on.

From the beginning, the story has bubbled with enough drama to rival a good Hollywood whodunit. And even though it unfolded on the other side of the world with only three Americans on board, many were sucked in anyway.

"This story has many ingredients of compelling drama, particularly early on: lives at stake, mystery unsolved, a race against time, human emotion," Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, said in an email.

Many found it impossible to believe that a modern Boeing 777 carrying 239 people could just vanish without a trace in an age where an iPhone can be tracked just about anywhere.

And so they tuned in to watch the latest developments. And when there were no new developments, they stayed glued to their smartphones because the suspense of not knowing - or possibly missing something new - somehow spiked when nothing was going on. From oil slicks to pings from dying black boxes, each new lead provided a salacious morsel that drove viewers to wonder: Will this be it?

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/8605230.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. We are? CNN is, but I hardly think we are

granted I make the mistake of having them on during the weekend in the hopes they will cover actual news from Eastern Europe. Not much luck on that one, so I guess I am giving them free ratings.

[Nye Bevan]

2. I guess there are quite a few incurious people with a short attention span,

who have totally lost interest in why a modern airliner would inexplicably crash into the ocean, killing 239 people. That's to be expected in the era of Candy Crush and Flappy Bird. I, however, am still very curious as to how such a thing could happen.

[NYC_SKP]

3. I'm an American and I'm not obsessed. The media is obsessed.

And sometimes Americans take the bait.

Take guns, for example. The media has us thinking that we are in greater danger than ever before, when in fact we are safer than ever.

The media lives by blood and fear and anquish and worry.

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

FUD.

[madville]

4. Wolf Blitzer maybe

239 people died this last minute from natural causes, at the hands of their government, war, famine, murder, auto accidents, etc,etc.

To me it doesn't matter that they all died in one incident, how are they anymore important than the other thousands that die every hour?

[Nye Bevan]

5. Because we don't understand how it happened.

Deaths by war and famine are equally tragic, but we understand what causes these deaths. If the cause of the airplane crashing was somehow definitively determined then there would be much less interest.

[Lex]

6. Being obsessed with it and wanting to know what happened

are two different things.

[SheilaT]

7. Not all of us are.

It helps a great deal not to watch conventional news shows.