Aviation Week & Space Technology reports
today that the nation's biggest weapons development program has
surpassed its testing goals for calendar year 2011, and is on track to
do the same in 2012. The goal for 2011 was 872 flight tests, and as of
last Thursday, 875 had been completed. This is very good news, since
three U.S. military services and a dozen allies need various versions of
the plane to replace aging Cold War fighters. Without it, they can't
preserve U.S. air superiority through mid-century.
So where are all the news stories highlighting the importance of
this achievement and praising American ingenuity? Over the last several
years, news services and the general media have reported every setback
the F-35 program has faced, real or imagined. You know, like the
trillion-dollar number to operate the plane through 2065 that it now
turns out none of the military users believes (they're getting ready to
challenge the methods and assumptions supporting the calculation).
I checked news.google.com for F-35 stories this morning, and it
came up mostly with headlines like "Lockheed's F-35 Not in Budget 'Cross
Hairs', Dempsey Says," and "McCain Raises Concerns About F-35 Cost
Overruns." Something tells me if I wait a few days for the Fourth
Estate to digest the good news from the F-35 program, I'm still going to
find mostly negative reports about how it's faring. I predict all the
major news outlets will decide it isn't worth reporting that the
Pentagon's most expensive and complicated weapons program is making
steady progress.
Aviation Week and the rest of the trade press will notice, but the
New York Times? Not a chance.
This tells you some important things about the way news is
reported in the general media. First, it underscores the preference of
reporters and editors for stories involving conflict of some sort. If
it's good news, it usually isn't considered news at all. Second, it
reflects the ideological biases of some outlets, which will report any
kind of lurid nonsense about big weapons programs with minimal checking,
but just can't be bothered to tell you the other side of the story.
And third, it suggests why people who are exposed to a great deal of
daily news tend to be pessimistic about America's future -- because all
the technological breakthroughs and economic achievements get short
shrift, while bad news hogs the front page.
Oh, and it also tells you one more thing about the prevailing
approach to gathering the news.
It tells you why consumers are walking
away in droves, preferring social media and internet aggregators to the
daily downer they get each day from traditional outlets. People just
don't believe (or don't care about) the version of reality they are
getting from newspapers and television news, so they are voting with
their feet to get information from other sources.
If you look at the
way the F-35 story has been reported over the last several years, that
reaction is easy to understand. It's an essential program that is
making steady progress, but you'd never know that from reading stories
about it in the general media.
Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D.