"Unfortunately for James, aviation authorities acquiesced to media requests to relax restrictions and allowed low-altitude media flights in the area while the aerial search was still underway."
The media had full permission to be there and were perfectly within the law. They were probably allowed because of the other's poster's comments. More eyes in the sky.
I feel for Mr. Kim but I beleive in his grief he is looking anywhere to lay blame.
And quite honesty, the poster who started this thread should be ashamed of the lie he added to the title. The media interfered with nothing.
"This untimely and irrational decision caused many rescue helicopters to abandon their operations for one full afternoon due to dangerous conditions created by media airplanes."
...which aculeus encapsulated in his title as, "[Media planes interfered with search for Kims]"
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What I'm also not saying is media is unneeded!
FOX is great to give info and updates on fires, warnings, school shootings, etc.
But what I am saying is the media should get out of the way when rescue personnel are trying to save someone's life!!!!!---
Do we really need to see someone's body being pulled from a river bed, a mountainside, a car, etc.?
No....that's a form of voyeurism.....and we have become a voyeuristic society!
I've got to agree 100% with this assessment.
Sorry, but it seems everybody screwed up except the guy who took a shortcut through a blizzard and broke a cardinal rule by walking out (in a circle) and leaving his family in what little shelter was available.
(Not to mention failing to figure out that he was NOT driving on a "major artery" and turning around while he still had fuel & a charge in his cell phone.)
The family survived because they stayed with the car and because a host of various people was out looking for them based on scant information - including two completely independent guys who worked out the cell signals on their own. I'm left to wonder how this story would be presented if the same results came about because the channel 11 news copter had seen them first (?)
Also, insisting on next-of-kin access to credit card data & phone records gets real close to opening a door for identity theft. (Which does NOT suggest that a missing persons report automatically gets sufficient official attention to get to those records in a timely manner.)
If there is a lesson here it is not that the state and the media are 'bad', it's that bad decisions often have worse consequences.
I think Spencer Kim wants to change some things so no one else has to experience what James Kim experienced.
I don't there is a blame game going on. He just wants the facts out there to affect change.