Force of habit.

As we all know, news broadcasters in America use helicopters. It's a perfectly good idea: you can get superb footage of car-chases and gunfights and fires and floods and things behind police cordons. But, at some point, it seems to have become more automatic than considered: they just send their helicopters to whatever the biggest story is right now.

I noticed this at the start of the Michael Jackson coverage yesterday — the very start, when no-one was sure whether he was dead or not and the crowd outside the hospital was still small.

"Michael Jackson's been rushed to hospital and reported dead? He's in the hospital now, either being treated or prepared for the morgue? We have to find out what's going on in there. Quick! Send the chopper to get some footage of the hospital's roof."

And then, having got that footage, they broadcast it. For ages.

Odd.