Missing Malaysian Airlines Flight: A Breaking News Analysis from 3 networks

CNN Breaking Update: 10:45am

PIX 11 News Update: About 5:15pm

NBC News Update: 6:35pm

**These times are when I turned on the television and saw the Breaking News updates(as they were reported continuously for several hours) and not when the reports began on the network.**

Image via TheStar

On Thursday, new details emerged about the missing Malaysian Airlines flight (MH370), which has been missing for almost a week now. Officials have expanded the search area for the missing jet to include the Indian Ocean. A breaking news story across a number of networks revealed that the plane may have turned back towards Malaysia, flown over the peninsula, passed the Andaman Sea, and continued west for hundreds of miles. Officials noted they tracked the flight via information that was automatically sent to Rolls-Royce (the engine manufacturer) prior to its disappearance.

I looked at a breaking news story on CNN, PIX 11 News at 5, and NBC News. CNN has been covering the story for several days and I noticed they continued to investigate it as a Breaking News story. Unlike CNN, PIX 11 had updates throughout the day on Thursday about the plane. Usually, these updates interrupted scheduled programming. NBC was the one that seemed to be covering the story from a more international perspective (likely because of its global reach), and mentioned a lot about how Malaysian officials were working to find the missing plane.

I found lots of similarities between CNN’s breaking news report about the extended search area and NBC because of the vast amount of resources they have in international reporting and investigation. PIX 11, being NYC based, split its focus between this incident and the unfolding explosion scene in Upper Manhattan. The CNN reporters seemed to take this situation a bit more passively, clearly showing that they were baffled by the news. At some points, CNN reporter Richard Quest would humorously compare the situation with Air France Flight 447 and its disappearance in 2009. I think that they took this approach because of how long they’ve been covering this story and because they’ve reported more than one breaking news story about the missing flight.

NBC took it the most seriously and his tone was very serious when reporting. I think that this was likely because of how the program itself is structured and because they haven’t been reporting on it as much. PIX 11 was switching between the two stories, as they were dealing with a developing story at the same time. Their anchor, Scott Stanford seemed a bit more concerned about the NYC situation and quickly ran through the Malaysian Airlines Breaking News story.

I did noticed that all three networks continuously displayed a graphic of the plane and the extended search territory (like the one pictured above).