I appreciate there are fine differences in the scenarios of disappearance, but do the media seem to be making more of the issue of a/c or debris not yet being located yet than in previous similar incidents?
I'm pretty sure in time gone by there have been aircraft lost at sea that have taken a little while to find (it was about five days for AF447?); and it just strikes me that the mainstream news outlets are more than ever - even by their standards - making an issue that 2.5 days in there's still no sign; like it's completely unprecedented and totally incomprehensible.
Is it me, or maybe there's a Moore's Law of media flabbergast?
In case of AF447, even though the location of supposed incident was poorly known, pieces of wreckage were spotted from the air during the second day, before any ships even had a chance to get to the site, and first bodies were being pulled out of the ocean in 5 days.
In case of TWA 800, a large piece of the wing was found in the ocean the day after the incident.
Finding no trace of the aircraft at 60+ hours after it goes missing, in a densely populated region, is quite unusual and the media is justified in making it an issue.