From The Calculus of Death to the Injunction to Care

AF447 coverage focuses on objective facts and figures, representing coverage known as the ‘calculus of death.’

As evidenced by the provided video on the previous page, coverage of the disappearance of Air France flight 447 was much more factually and objectively based than coverage of MH370. This focus on objectivity, however, can also be considered confining. Objective reports, such as those concerning the disappearance of Air France flight 447, can be categorically deemed to report what Simon Cottle has termed the “calculus of death,” relaying purely factual and objective information (2012, p. 221). Though these “calculus of death” reports may be intended to fulfill traditional goals of journalism, they do so by “conform[ing] to a narrowly conceived, geo-politically informed, and essentially amoral and emotionally evacuated journalistic outlook on death and disasters around the world” (2012, p. 233). The AF447 broadcasts, governed by objectivity, exemplify this notion and result in factually correct yet morally and emotionally void reports.

A screenshot of the drama and absurdity present in CNN’s coverage of the disappearance of MH370

The 2014 Situation Room broadcasts concerning the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, on the other hand, stray drastically from the bounds of the calculus of death. Instead of upholding objectivity and mentioning only what is assuredly true, this alternative form of reporting can be said to exemplify a trend known as the “injunction to care,” wherein journalists tend to “speak of a more expansive, universally inflected, morally infused and occasionally emotion-filled stance to disasters” (Cottle, 2012, p. 237). This effect is often achieved through the “production of dramatic scenes,” and, when taken to extremes, centers around “reporting [that is] framed by exaggerated claims, shocking images, and gratuitous emotionalism” (Cottle, 2012, p.235 & 239).

Increased Emotionalism: The Rise of a Confessional Culture and its Contribution to Speculation

These aspects of injunction to care coverage, and gratuitous emotion, especially, are becoming more and more natural for journalists to include in TV news broadcasts because of a trend of increased acceptance, and even expectance, of emotionality in western culture. As described by Mervi Pantti,

The emotionalizing of news is first and foremost a reflection of the transformation of the emotional culture in late modern society, rather than being just a development to which journalists themselves have actively contributed (2010, p. 173).

Simon Cottle concurs, stating,

We are currently seeing a cultural shift towards a more emotional public sphere, one where men as well as women can publicly display their emotions, as well as the emergence of an increasingly confessional culture.[…] This cultural backdrop may also be at work in encouraging journalist reflexivity more generally (2012, p. 243).

In short, the rise of this confessional culture helps explain why news broadcasters, especially Blitzer and other CNN journalists, tend to show more emotionality and more make appeals to pathos than could be observed in AF447 broadcasts.

In a confessional culture, emotions tend to be voiced and displayed.

The emotion of interest, in combination with the rise of a confessional culture, is a major factor in the rampant speculation observed in 2014.

The combination of these emotional tendencies with the emotion of interest is what really results in the outrageous speculation in coverage of the disappearance of MH370. As Paul Silvia notes of this emotion, “Interest is a counterweight to feelings of uncertainty” and that it results in response to an event’s “novelty-complexity, which refers to evaluating an event as new, unexpected, complex, hard to process, surprising, mysterious, or obscure” (2008, p. 58). With so many unknowns and as such a surprising event, the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 proves to be a major source of novelty-complexity. To make sense of this emotion, Silvia notes that “finding something understandable is the hinge between interest and confusion […] people are more interested when stimuli are made both more complex and more understandable” (2008, p. 58).  This need for a certain level of understanding in order to maintain interest is what accounts emotionally for the rampant speculation observed in MH370 coverage.