A Duty to Inform, Not to Exploit

I doubt we spared anyone personal trauma or in any way impeded dissemination of the very disturbing ATC tape that brutally chronicled the final moments of nine people on a Learjet 60 that crashed in Florida on Sunday by choosing not to run the audio. But that wasn’t why we made that decision.

From somewhere deep within each of us here at AvBrief we all instantly agreed that it was simply the decent thing to do.

The cameras-everywhere environment we operate within has many advantages to us as news gatherers. It’s pretty easy to find pixeled evidence of just about everything that moves these days and that truly allows us to broaden both the depth and breadth of our coverage. We use ATC tapes and surveillance video a lot and I think it makes us better.

But we are also profoundly human here at AvBrief and to a person on our little staff we recoiled at the prospect of using that audio to exploit the horror of the last few seconds on earth of that crew and those passengers for the sake of a few clicks.

Most of us listened to it because it’s our job to act as your representative in observing and assessing the reams of data that go into preparing what we think is useful information about aviation. All of us talked about the lasting effect that tape had on us. I couldn’t stop thinking about my granddaughter, who is just a few years younger than the FO on the Lear. And while we would never dream of denying or ignoring that tape’s existence we did agree that we could spare our readers easy access to it because of the way it made us all feel.

The best factual and respectful analysis we’ve heard so far comes from Max Trescott and Rob Mark’s excellent NTSB News Talk podcast which we run every two weeks on AvBrief. We’ll be sending it out on Thursday as usual but because of the urgency of this accident it’s been posted a couple of days early.

Now, for those of you who cry censorship and wonder how we could dare to get in the way of the public’s right to know I say nonsense. Our job, as we see it, is to gather and disseminate information about aviation topics and events that interest and educate our readers.

That’s why we quoted some salient details about flight conditions and descent rates from the transcript. That the FO was able to ensure that information got to others is nothing short of remarkable. I understand most of you have likely heard the tape and, just like me, I suspect you wish you hadn’t. You also understand that the horror some of the other sounds convey did nothing to further inform or educate you on the circumstances of this tragedy.

Most of our media colleagues agreed with us I’m happy to say. All the people we like in this industry took a similar approach to us and provided the information without exploiting the horror. I’m proud of us all. I was also glad to see prominent pilots like NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and Adam Kinzinger decrying the DEI nonsense that some are spewing because the FO, a fully qualified and clearly capable and brave pilot, was also a young woman.

For those who, likely with the “help” of emotionless and empathy-absent AI, felt it necessary to not only run the tape but even match it, second by second, to highly speculative timelines and graphic representations of the flight profile in the name of “transparency” I say you need to re-evaluate your priorities. To those who exploited the circumstances of the crash for political and ideological reasons I say shame on you. Find another calling and don’t you dare try to spill that filth in our comments section. You will be instantly and permanently banned.

Because when it comes right down to it, the reason we didn’t push that tape in front of tens of thousands of readers is the same reason every police car, ambulance and fire truck in the world has a couple of tarpaulins onboard. Out of respect for victims of tragedy, the first and most humane thing we can do is put a layer of privacy over that moment we will all face one day.

Godspeed Capt. Jeff Gregory, FO Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, Anita Maria Cetina, Charmi Fehr, Rachael Reed, Helen Sharp and Adam Robinson and their kids Charlie, 2, and Emma, 4.

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