Cool Under Pressure

Government websites now provide more multimedia resources, although they also continue to provide traditional print reports that document incidents, disasters, new policies, publications from fact-finding committee, and other bureaucratic forms of public rhetoric. First the Coat Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board released video of the dramatic footage of the recent plane landing in the Hudson River without fatalities. Now the FAA has released the audio files that record the calm, businesslike exchanges that the pilot carried on with aircraft controller even as a deadly disaster loomed. The neutrality of the voice that frames the file and authenticates the contents is also an example of the affect-free professional decorum associated with aviation and its public rhetoric.