09.01.11	What "cruise ship" was this man on when he tragically threw his son overboard.
Mainstream Media Cruise Madness Okay - I just have to rage a little over this because it makes me so mad. Local television news station web sites tend to write the most sensationalistic and least accurate news articles anywhere. So when I saw this headline for the first time...

It did not surprise me to see the article originated with a local TV news station web site in Orlando. I have had issues with this particular news station's ignorance about the cruise industry before, so when I went to make a comment below the article I found I already had an account.

My comment was this...

"A three-hour tour boat carrying 85 people on an excursion within a harbor is NOT a cruise ship. It's a tour boat. You are located in Florida! How can you call yourselves news people if you don't even know the difference between a cruise ship and the Minnow from Gilligan's Island?"

I used the Gilligan's Island reference because as local television news anchors it is a subject within their immediate realm of knowledge.

Most importantly, the boy was recovered just fine - which would not have been so easy with a real cruise ship, not a tour boat. But to my point; I honestly don't know if this was media sensationalism or just stupidity. At first I suspected stupidity, but now that dozens of other news outlets have picked up the exact same headline I now believe it is deliberate sensationalism.

I do not mean to take this serious subject too lightly - but the fact is that there is a group of people who purposely write sensationalistic nonsense about cruise ships every day - very, very little of it with even a grain of truth, where they plant the idea that cruise ships are havens of covered-up crime where nefarious things happen daily and that these alleged crimes go completely unreported. These people alledge, with absolutely no foundation, that several people have like been thrown overboard from cruise ships.

It just isn't true, and several years ago we went on a campaign to teach the mainstream media that people do not "fall" off of cruise ships, nor are they murdered and the body disposed of secretly without a trace. We got the truth out and the most of the media actually stopped sensationalizing about cruise ship "crime" - until now.

Here is the truth - 13,000,000 cruises are taken by Americans each year. Each year a handful of people go missing from cruise ships - these are in almost all cases suicides (supported by evidence) and never has a case of a person being thrown overboard been proven. In fact, no one has ever been accused of doing it, let alone convicted.

I just read an article by Laura Bly in USA Today that said 17 people died in Yosemite National Park this year alone, two more than the annual average of 15. Now, I don't see any web sites alleging there is a cover-up conspiracy about people dying at Yosemite, yet when it comes to cruise ships certain "news people" just can't restrain themselves from falling into sensationalism.

I just want to say one thing - cruise ships are large vessels where people eat, sleep and spend several days traveling to distant places. They are extremely safe - statistically the safest vacation in the world. There have been crimes on cruise ships, even people murdered in the last couple of years, but the murders were not random acts - they were sad domestic issues that would have happened whether the couple was on a cruise ship or in a Winnebago at Yosemite National Park.

There is absolutely NO documented crime where a person, dead or alive, was ever thrown off of a cruise ship, and I expect the news media to know and respect that fact. How do you demonstrate that you know and respect that fact? You refuse to write headlines like the one above. It's a slap in the face to people like me who work in the real cruise industry.

new feature articles

Read about CruiseMates

NEW YORK TIMES:
"Many sites that offer reviews are selling cruises, which raises questions about impartiality. An exception is CruiseMates."

FORTUNE MAGAZINE:
"The Web's best site for articles, advice, or chatting with Cruise People. Self-financed and run independently of the industry, so their opinions are impartial"