In our media world there are varying combinations of the responsible and irresponsible news sources. The mix can involve communicating an agenda, dispensing spectacle, and/or relaying information. Fox has a steady following of polarized viewers, whose appetite seems to be maintained through Fox’s incendiary tools of attack against anything progressive, often suggesting conspiracy, scandal, and/or subterfuge.

The dearth of information plaguing the fate of Malaysian Flight 370, along with the apparent mismanagement of information by Malaysian officials, then followed by seemingly furtive details, tended to spur the spinning of fearful scenarios by some media sources.

In steps Fox News contributor, retired AF Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, verbally curtsied to as an “expert on nefarious plots.” In the real world, he is a Fox regular — oft-critic and serial challenger of President Obama’s authenticity. He often appears as an expert regarding any imputed foreign-affairs debacle. For example, before MH370’s ethereal disappearance, he was seen on Fox calling for a select committee to investigate Benghazi, furtive and scandalous and stealthy phantoms still being pursued — and created. Furthermore, whenever shadows of scandal are relatively idle, he still claims that President Obama was born in Kenya.

He seems to have a thirst for attention and headlines that Fox likes to fill. On March 14^th, less than a week after MH370’s disappearance, Malaysian officials’ mention of possible hijacking abruptly shook loose McInerney’s terrorist specter. To Megyn Kelly, he conspiratorially suggested a flight path to Pakistan or Iran, saying a Boeing source made the connection.

On March 18^th, information still sparse, Sean Hannity credited McInerney with the exclusive on the terrorist connection. To explain non-detection by India’s radar, McInerney said that MH370 flew in the shadow of a flight like Singapore Flight 68 (one assumes he looked up the schedule). As the interview progressed, McInerney waited for Hannity  to force out of him the motive. McInerney suggested that the captured 777 might be used as a bearer of weapons of mass destruction, even suggesting a “carrier” [assume he meant US aircraft carrier] as its target. “We’ll hear from Malaysia and Pakistan within 24-48 hours,” he said.

Appearing like a oracle On March 19^th, McInerney returned to Fox to share his “proclaimed” expertise with Megyn Kelly. Even though Boeing denied it had said the plane landed in Pakistan, the general suggested to Megyn, “that doesn’t mean the denial is true.” Besides, it’s the same distance to West Pakistan as it is to Beijing. That comparative fact seemed to validate his claim. Furthermore, Malaysia and the US were not “coming clean,” the General said with certainty. As the general paused for a breath, Megyn fawned over his being “well-connected.”

Even on March 20^th, after a satellite’s sighting of large pieces of debris 1500 miles southwest of Perth, Austrialia, the general stuck with his terrorist story, this again with Sean Hannity on Fox News. “You don’t fly for seven hours and flame out,” he said with conviction. Besides “Aircraft experts know nothing about radical Islam,” he added, suggesting that as affirmation.

At this point, the laborious search in the expansive Indian Ocean Southwest of Perth, Australia continues. Sparse though it is, all empirical evidence seems to point to incapacitated passengers and crew as non-sentient witnesses, riding, almost totally isolated from the rest of the world, to the geographic limits of the plane’s fuel, descending and perhaps swallowed by a watery grave.

Reportedly there were no phone messages by passengers and no voice messages from the crew after some 38 minutes into the flight. The expanse of the largest debris could easily be a broken off wing — light, hollow, and floating, but about where the fuel would give out after some 7 hours of flight. Five days have passed and the debris could have sunk or be floating hundreds of miles away. Or it could be a cargo hold. We don’t know yet.

The imagined scenario? Perhaps a conscientious pilot programmed a secondary emergency flight plan, discovered such an emergency, and had time to switch the primary flight plan to the secondary before passing out. Passengers and crew unconscious, the return to Kuala Lumpur International was bypassed as the perhaps depressurized plane continued until its fuel was completely spent.

So far, we have little else to speculate with.