I'm putting this in the dunk tank becuase its a 2019 article I just want to complain about it.

So I was bored at work this morning and reading about Malaysian Air Flight 370 that disappeared almost a decade ago. And I found this Atlantic article that proports to solve the mystery. The only thing I learned is that no one should read the Atlantic.

I foolishly assumed that an article rehashing what we know about the doomed flight and the current leading theories on its disappearance would be relatively free of Western brainworms. Boy was I wrong.

First off the term 'Malaysian regime' appears several times, and the main thrust of the article is that the only reason this mystery hasen't been solved was becuase of the corrupt Malaysian government, eastern despotism and saving-face. Literally the same shit they say about China any time anything happens. What the Atlantic dosen't tell you is that all parties involved: Malaysia, China, the US and Australia pretty much all agreed in 2018 this was a case of pilot suicide. Malaysia is at fault for a lot of bullshit during the search and tried to downplay the result (which is embarrassing for any country) but they did acknowledge it in the end, which is rich for an American to complain when the CIA shot down TWA 800 and probably did Ustica. The Atlantic also implied that it single handedly solved this mystery in 2019 with shoe-leather reporting (aka with gossip and hearsay).

Since this is the Atlantic, they also turn this into a white savior narrative. The focus for half this story is some white boomer failson from California who has spend his entire life living off his parent's money. All he has done in life is vacation in 177 different countries. He found some of the plane debris, but crucially not the most important first piece on Reunion. Like as far as I can tell he really didn't contribute anything to solving the mystery, all the actual evidence came from signals data supplied by the Malaysians and a satellite company. Also going by this story, you would think only the Austrialians cared enough to search for this plane, the not even hidden subtext being that the barbaric Asiatics don't value the lives of its citizens. Which again is insane becuase China and Malaysia were both as involved in the search as Australia.

There is also a bizzare digression about internet trolls and disinformation, literally irrelevant other than the fact it made the white California guy sad.

China, appears only fleetingly in the story, despite being a huge presence during the investigation, since most of the passengers were Chinese. Notably, one of their only mentions is at the end when the article says they were censoring the relatives of the passengers. Which as far as I can tell is completely baseless. Like the only thing this can be is the Chinese government trying to smooth over a potential international incident when angry relatives went to Malaysia right after the disappearance and protested in the airport.

I do encourage people to read this becuase its kind of eye opening how deep Western ideology is embedded in the Western press. Like this article on a largely settled issue, based on analyzing technical communications data, is turned into a heroic narrative of a white guy selflessly searching for the truth by taking a vacation in Madagascar. Like the press has never not been a propaganda tool in any country, but to get such a heavy dose on what I assumed would be an fairly factual recounting of an interesting but not political topic is infuriating.