Copycat Cable News

I know I've railed about this in the past. This latest example just reinforces and proves my earlier points. The producers and decision makers at the two CNN channels and at MSNBC and FOX never cease to amaze me. Early yesterday they acted like they were filming the scoop of the year. I'm talking about the two-hour balloon ride in Colorado during which the pundits and commentators breathlessly told us of the innocent six year old boy who was an unwitting passenger on the runaway balloon.
Like many televised car chases featuring local police and state troopers, the video we watched was uniform and mostly unenlightening. Toward the end, though, one side of the balloon deflated some, rendering it a giant beret flying across the Colorado high plains.
But the cable news boys stayed on the case. (And why did both CNN networks feel obligated to do this? Were they afraid one wasn't enough?) Their pronouncements were all based on the mistaken assumption that the lad was, in fact, in the basket or box at the bottom of the balloon. That's understandable enough and even forgivable enough. But what defies logic is that they proceeded to spout all manner of idiotic speculation in the absence of hard facts and news. One network (it only gets to remain anonymous here because I can't remember which one) compared the flight of this balloon to the "Ghost Flight" of Payne Stewart years ago. Several of them mused as to whether the boy would have any role to play in trying to effect a soft landing of the balloon. And all of them commented endlessly about the weather, that "10,000 feet" up it would be much cooler than the 70 degrees on the ground. (Of course, most of them omitted that "the ground" was/is over 5000 feet up there.) Was there sufficient oxygen for the boy to survive?? Would he "freeze"? In hindsight, it was a bit comical, though we couldn't know that at the time -- the fact that the balloon was empty.
Whether this ends up being identified as a planned prank by the family or merely confusion by a weird family, we don't know today. But my point is, cable news should abandon their senses when these events begin. They should act and think with some degree of intelligence. And yesterday, I didn't see it from any of them.