Reason # 5419 on why I hate the media

Just sitting here late night, a little bored, waiting on my late night dinner (gyro platter and an order of wings) to arrive and I thought I might hop on over to a newspaper on the web and catch up on the goings on of the day.

While I was at work I did see, albeit briefly, some of the coverage of the airplane crash at San Francisco International Airport, but not enough to really call myself all that informed on the topic, all I new was an airplane had crashed, and it was in San Francisco.  I knew next to nothing about the details of the crash, if any had come out, or if anyone was hurt or had died.  Save for the very basics I was heretofore uninformed on the issue.

With that in mind and me having time to kill, I started to read the account in the Washington Post.  What I read is why I am here.  After going through the details of what may have happened, who will be leading up the investigation from the NTSB, the casualty numbers and what not, I stumbled upon something, and well, I will just copy it and then explain why I dislike it so;

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg posted a note on her Facebook page that she and three colleagues were originally slated to be on the Asiana flight.
“Taking a minute to be thankful and explain what happened,” she wrote in her Facebook post. “My family, colleagues Debbie Frost, Charlton Gholson and Kelly Hoffman and I were originally going to take the Asiana flight that just crash-landed. We switched to United so we could use miles for my family’s tickets. Our flight was scheduled to come in at the same time, but we were early and landed about 20 minutes before the crash. Our friend [David Eun] was on the Asiana flight and he is fine.”

Anyone care to venture why this might irk me so?  Perhaps it is the simple fact that, while telling the story of a plane crash, for some reason, it is apparently newsworthy to talk to people that weren't on the plane.  Sure, maybe luck, fate or some other reason might be involved, but at the end of the day the simple fact remains, it is not news to tell us who wasn't on the plane.  I can walk down the street here in Pittsburgh and pretty much everyone I would meet were not on the plane either.

Let me make this clear to any and all media folks out there who might come across this post, it is not news to tell me about things that did not fucking happen.   Really, is it that hard to figure out?  Why must the media be so saturated with this nonsense?