I was shocked and surprised to hear about the crash of Air France flight 447 from Rio to Paris. I found it hard to believe that a plane could crash in today's world without anyone really knowing how it happened. Air France's spokesmen believe that lightning brought the plane down while flying over the Atlantic Ocean, however they did not know of any problems until about two hours after it happened.
What shocked me the most about the plane crash was the coverage that came after learning that the plane was lost. Shortly after it was learned that 228 people were lost at sea and most likely killed, CNN asked a question that I found very shocking. They asked if there were any important figures on the plane. They also said that they had believed that there was a statesman on the plane but it turned out that he was not.
The fallowing day The New York Times did a story about flight AF447 and put aside a paragraph talking about two of the passengers on the flight. These two were an American couple.
Are we lead to believe that the death of the other 226 people matters less because they were French, Brazilian, German, Chinese, or any other nationality besides American? Or the fact that they were neither Celebrities or Politicians?
I could not imagine being a family member of one of the victims and seeing how someone I loved is only being looked at as a number just because of where he/she was born and never held office or recorded a song.
