There is politics in death, as in life. Some dead people are just more important than others.
Tyler Stanger is the name of the flight instructor who died when a small airplane crashed into an apartment building in New York City.
The other person on the plane was Cory Lidle, a baseball player. His name was prominently displayed after the tragic accident.
You had to scan a fair amount of media to find the name of Tyler Stanger.
- Michael
John Spragge said
Perhaps that happened because Mr. Lidle’s passport survived, and turned up on the street below the crash. Also, in the US, airplane owners often register aircraft in their own names, so the press could have found out Mr. Lidle’s name fairly quickly by tracing the call sign (N-number) of the plane. By contrast, the media (and the authorities) needed a fair bit of time to track down Mr. Stanger’s name. That doesn’t mean that some deaths don’t get more publicity than others; that happens in all cases, as a matter of course (compare the number of obituaries written by the paper to the number of deaths on any given day). But in this case, the papers had no sinister reason for leaving Mr. Stanger’s name out of the initial announcements: they didn’t have the same immediate access to it.
brandon said
michael- if you or your readers would like more info about tyler and his life there will be a biography posted to http://www.stangers.us sometime tomorrow. john, you are right that it took much longer to identify tyler.
Chrissi Paul said
Brandon,
Are you Tyler’s older brother? If so, I’m so sorry for your loss. My husband Jason and Tyler had become very close friends since Jason started flying about 2 years ago. We are completely heartbroken. Please let us know if there is anything we can do for Steph, Ash, or the family! Again, we are devastated and and so very sorry!