News Framing in Air Disaster Reporting: A Case Study of Korean Air 801
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person-to-person instead of telephone to make sure. Then, I went to FAA and talked
to that person who gave me some more. Then, I went back to NTSB and the NTSB
person confirmed even more. So then, I felt like I had two sources and both were
saying the pilot had no idea that he was about to crash that they believed that they
were in a normal descent. So, that was controlled flight into terrain which again
equals to pilot error.
The NBC journalist in Washington D.C. clearly had the best access to official sources, the
NTSB investigators and FAA officials, that enabled him to conclude the cause of the crash was
pilot error. However, he made several factual errors in his initial reporting, for example in
claiming that the pilot had homed in to the radio beacon instead of the runway and that the
cockpit’s low altitude warning signal did not go off.
Reporters in Guam, whether Americans or Koreans, had a more limited access to the
NTSB investigators, and thus, their reporting focused primarily on conjecturing different theories
or scenarios for the crash cause. Newsgathering on the crash site can be difficult and inefficient as
conceded by the NBC reporter in Washington.
I think the easiest information is here from the agency (NTSB). I find Guam was too
far away for me to go, but oftentimes in the U.S. if there’s a crash and say I’m in
Washington and we have Alaskan Airline crash in California—so I went immediately
to California. But a lot of the time, when I’m in California, for my information, I’m
telephoning back to Washington…It’s hard for a foreign reporter to compete. And it
would be hard for even an American reporter who doesn’t know the people to
compete. And definitely, from out on the scene because it is too far away. But if you
were in Washington and you cover these people through the years and you get to
know them, then you have some inside sources who will talk to you. Somebody who
knows the people and has dealt with them for some years can have access. And
trust—they want to tell you something, but they don’t want to be quoted.
Construction of News Frames: In constructing a different probable cause of the crash from
the American media, the Korean journalists were motivated by not only what they believe to be
objective facts but also national interest, as evident in their sourcing. They are critical of the New
York Times and NBC News, viewing them as proponents of U.S. interests instead of independent
commercial news media. As a result, KBS and JoongAng Ilbo journalists consistently framed the
cause of accident in terms of faulty navigation devices—glideslope indicator and the minimum safe
Convention