NEW YORK — Summoned from his couch to cover last week’s plane disaster in Washington, CNN’s Pete Muntean rushed in for the first of 24 live reports over the next 48 hours. At one point, he used a model airplane and helicopter to demonstrate. At another, he called President Trump “unhinged” for speculating that diversity in hiring contributed to the crash.
Even regular viewers may have wondered: Who is Pete Muntean, anyway?
As CNN’s aviation correspondent and a pilot who has flown near where the collision that killed 67 people took place, Muntean illustrates the changes in what used to be an important specialty in journalism.
Precise numbers are hard to come by. But simply by the content out there, there are fewer reporters concentrating solely on what is a complex and technical beat, both because of how the business has changed and the relative safety of flying.
“I realized that planes weren’t crashing and I needed a new beat,” said Bill Adair, a former reporter who wrote a book, “The Mystery of Flight 427: Inside a Crash Investigation,” about a 1994 plane crash in western Pennsylvania that killed 132 people. “That’s a good thing.”
Adair switched to politics, and later created the fact-checking website PolitiFact.
Muntean, 36, was born for his job. Both of his parents were pilots, and he kept his passion for aviation even after his mother, Nancy Lynn, died when the plane she was flying in a Virginia air show crashed. Muntean was 18 at the time and witnessed it; he was the show’s MC.
Shortly after, he flew his first solo flight. He keeps a plane at a small Maryland airport now and takes to the sky when time allows.
“I don’t think I could ever leave it,” he said. “I love flying more than anything, and the next best thing is talking about it.”
Muntean believes a major part of his job is translation, trying to put into plain English terminology that non-pilots can get lost in. He tries not to be glum about tragedies he occasionally needs to cover. “I feel like I’m the guy who makes people afraid of flying,” he said, “which is a real drag.”
Aviation is his beat, but like many reporters who follow the industry now, it’s not his sole area of concentration. He covers transportation in general. Tom Costello covers aviation for NBC News, but he also covers transportation, cybersecurity, space travel and economics. Jon Scott’s main job is as a news anchor for Fox News but, as a pilot, he’s involved in major aviation stories.
The New York Times splits things up: Niraj Chokshi covers aviation and transportation, Mark Walker follows the National Transporation Safety Board and Christine Chung follows the airline industry from a consumer perspective. David Koenig was airlines writer for The Associated Press until his recent retirement; the AP says his job will be filled.
“There are a lot of good reporters that cover aviation, but they are fewer than ever,” said Jon Ostrower, who has covered the industry for CNN and The Wall Street Journal and is now editor-in-chief of The Air Current, a subscription-based aviation news service.
The news industry’s economic struggles means there are less specialists in general in newsrooms. With safety a major component of the aviation beat, the fact that the last major U.S. commercial air crash before last week came in 2009 means there is less to do.
“I sympathize with editors,” Adair said. “If you have limited resources, there is not a lot of merit in putting a reporter on a beat where things are working well.”
Airline ownership consolidation means there are fewer reporters at regional newspapers knowledgeable about the industry because they have to follow the local company, Ostrower said. That assumes there are even many reporters at hollowed-out newspapers to do that.
There’s also much more flight tracking information easily available to the public through services like Flightradar24 and ADS-B Exchange than in years past. While helpful for journalists, that also increases the preponderance of armchair investigators clogging the Internet with less-than-informed theories, Ostrower said. And entities that offered training for reporters on aviation issues, including companies like Boeing and Pratt & Whitney, don’t do it anymore, he said.
To some experts, the shrinking of ranks on the aviation beat wasn’t necessarily apparent after the Washington crash. Where it’s likely to be noticed is in the weeks and months after, when the time comes to closely examine mechanical issues and policies that might need to be changed to prevent a recurrence.
Who will be watching to see what lessons are learned?
“We’ve witnessed the dismantling of the department store approach to news,” said veteran science reporter Miles O’Brien. “Everyone has a little boutique now. You can find experts, but it is incumbent upon the consumer to find trusted sources.”
O’Brien and Ostrower have something in common: they’ve both been laid off by CNN. Cutbacks may have taken O’Brien’s regular job, but producers come calling when news happens — so much so that he was put on a retainer by his old employer.
He’s made a handful of appearances following the Washington crash. When not on the air, O’Brien has been closely watching how Muntean — his former intern — covers the aviation beat.
O’Brien, whose left arm was amputated following an accident in 2014, has talked about people with disabilities in the airline industry. In 2023, he earned a license to fly again.
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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social
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