Isn’t it really standard operating procedure anymore for the media to try and scare us about everything? We all know what happened to the space shuttle Columbia a few years back, and we don’t need constant reminders in every single story about the current mission. Every story I’ve read about even the most mundane thing about the space shuttle includes something like this statement, which was in the final paragraph of a news story about what the Discovery crew did today:
Columbia’s seven astronauts were killed during re-entry when fiery gases entered a breach in the shuttle’s wing.
This shows up in every story, almost like the disclaimer that is automatically appended to the end of every e-mail sent from my company’s e-mail server.