The Media: Rant 1

Why does the media have to twist and sensationalize everything. I just read an article from the Los Angeles Times. The first line read, "A 15-year-old Los Angeles girl -- who navigated a single-engine Cessna through thunderstorms in Texas and took in breathtaking aerial views of Arizona's sunsets -- landed her plane to cheering crowds at Compton Woodley Airport Saturday and is believed to be the youngest black female pilot to fly solo across country." Now if that was true it would be two things, amazing and illegal. Amazing because any 15-year-old who could pull that off would be a step ahead of their peers. Illegal because the FAA does not allow you fly solo until you reach the age of 16. If you read the story you will find that the only thing factual in that first line is that there was a 15-year-old girl in the plane, the plane did fly cross country, and the girl was black. Beyond that not a sliver of truth. You see what actually happened is the young girl was actually accompanied by a 'safety pilot' and a man who was part of the Tuskegee Airman. The story doesn't mention it but the safety pilot in this case would also have to have been a certified flight instructor because the girl was not old enough to fly an airplane alone and even if she was she could not have had the Tuskegee Airman passenger as a student pilot with a solo endorsement. I don't know about you but to me 'solo' means 1 or alone not one plus the required instructor and an additional passenger. Was this young girl really the sole manipulator of the controls throughout the flight? Did she make the weather decisions necessary on a trip of this magnitude. Did she do the flight planning? We will never know because the article only wanted us to think that a 15-year-old black girl piloted an airplane across country. If she did, she should be proud of her accomplishment and she should be mad as hell at the LA Times for exploiting her - I think they wanted the race angle myself. Why couldn't the LA Times just tells us that 15-year-old pilot planned and executed a cross country flight under the expert tutilage of her flight instructor? Because even though it is a fabulous achievement, the media has to twist and sensationalize everything even if it means not telling the truth. Sad but true.