The Lesson Reviewed From the Passing of Billy Mays

By Fred Cunningham | Anchor
Published: July 1, 2009

Thanks to email, the internet and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, we’ve never been able to bring you news and information faster than we can today.

However, with that speed should come the constant reminder that the course of events hasn’t completely kept up with our technical advances.

The untimely death of TV pitchman Billy Mays this past Sunday is example one of why we need to be careful about jumping to conclusions.

The story obviously started with the sudden death of another celebrity at a time that a number of famous people have passed away. Billy Mays was found unresponsive in his Tampa home.

The second was that Mays had been on a plane a day earlier that suffered a rough landing at Tampa’s airport. A local TV station interviewed Mays who said he was hit in the head by an object, but he was all right.

I immediately recalled the tragic death of actress Natasha Richardson, who died shortly after what appeared to be a minor skiing accident.

As a matter of fact, I ever sent out a Twitter update and I’m very happy to note the words that started my post with these four words: “Maybe something or nothing: Billy Mays was on 737 that took hard landing SAT.“

We mentioned the hit on the head angle prominently in our Monday morning newscasts as I’m sure the rest of the media did that day.

It was later that we learned that the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner determined Mays died of a heart attack related to hypertensive heart disease. Vernard Adams said there was no sign of head trauma following the autopsy on Mays.

Bumped in the head? Oh, never mind.

Actually, I don’t think the media was out of bounds on this as a whole, but I didn’t see all of the coverage. I’m sure that there were some outlets that made the leap to connect the head bump with what led to May’s death.

I do know that in cases of breaking news, much of the early information we get is wrong and even from the best of sources.

Fighter pilots now have the technical ability to fly and shoot at constantly faster speeds, but I wonder if their abilities to comprehend those decisions are keeping pace?

I’ll let the Navy and Air Force pilots answer that question, while I make sure to re-double my efforts to always be careful with information before we sent it you way.

Faster than the speed of sound!