Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ub!uhura.cc.rochester.edu!rochester!sol!yamauchi From: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle Subject: Re: Weekly World News publishes Challenger tape transcript Message-ID: Date: 29 Jan 91 04:58:07 GMT References: <57477530@bfmny0.BFM.COM> Sender: news@cs.rochester.edu (Usenet news) Organization: University of Rochester Lines: 51 In-Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM's message of 28 Jan 91 01:54:19 GMT In article <57477530@bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes: * Why would a disreputable rag like WWN end up with this, rather than major, responsible organs like the NY Times? One possibility is that, simply because the big guys WERE so responsible about it and tried to go through the courts to force NASA to release what it had, their hands were tied: even if someone walked in the front door with a satchel of tapes and transcripts, they couldn't publish them without risking contempt of court! No, it was the other way around. The courts decided that it was *not* illegal for NASA to *withhold* the transcripts. This is not the same as saying it *would* have been illegal for the news media to *publish* them. (In fact, the latter decision would probably be unconstitutional.) Of course, the person providing the transcripts might have acquired them illegally -- but that's a different issue. The other point is money. Assume some staffer-geek made a few extracurricular visits to the Xerox machine one weekend. Who'll pay him the MOST for his scoop? How about Time (a division of the multibillion-dollar Time-Warner media/entertainment conglomerate), NBC (a division of the multibillion-dollar multinational General Electric corporation), CNN (a division of the multibillion-dollar Turner Broadcasting Empire), ABC, CBS, Newsweek... you get the idea. I would bet that, for a scoop like this, any one of the major media outlets would pay orders of magnitude more money than would a cheap supermarket tabloid. The tabloids *do* have one advantage over the major news suppliers -- they can make the stories up as they go along... Personally and for what it's worth, I would rather think of them going out to the 23rd Psalm than a checklist anyway... I don't know... I remember a quote from an interview Cronkite had with Armstrong before the Apollo 11 launch. Cronkite told the crew to suppose the LEM ascent engine failed to fire, and they were trapped on the moon with only a hour's oxygen. He then asked them how they would spend their last hour. Armstrong's answer: "I suppose we'd spend that hour trying to fix that engine..." -- _______________________________________________________________________________ Brian Yamauchi University of Rochester yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu Computer Science Department _______________________________________________________________________________