From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!karn
Newsgroups: net.columbia
Title: NASA news briefings
Article-I.D.: eagle.630
Posted: Sun Nov 14 13:53:46 1982
Received: Tue Nov 16 00:52:08 1982

If you get a chance, listen to the end-of-shift flight briefings via the
900 number.  Its very enlightening.

Right now, a couple of hotshot journalists are driving the power failure
subject deep into the ground.  They seem to think their holy mission
is to uncover sinister government coverups and plots.  They keep asking
the same questions over and over again, and the flight directors keep
giving the same perfectly acceptable answers: that it was not critical
to the mission, that there was no reason to wake up the crew just to
tell them, etc. etc.

But some journalists are never satisfied.  I have a lot of admiration for the
flight directors who seem to remain candid and unflappable in the face of
all this crap.

I am really disgusted with the shoddy journalism practices that cover
the shuttle missions.  Even when a network condescends to granting the
masses a tiny shred of a video transmission, some so-called "science
editor" insists on talking over the audio with comments like "Gee, I wonder
what that is that the camera is looking at", when if they would just SHUT
UP AND LISTEN, they might find out.  They might even learn something (but
I doubt it.)

Phil Karn

PS. There. I feel much better already.