I'm not knocking journos - not too much anyway - but you can't altogether blame modern comms, red tops and 24/7 news.
I recall in the Dhofar war when one of our Hueys was shot down, a respectable paper - can't recall exactly but it was
Telegraph or
Times or their Sunday equivalents - printed a tiny single paragraph along the lines of:
"A SOAF helicopter has been shot down in Dhofar, killing two British pilots; next of kin have
NOT yet been informed."
Given the comms in the mid 70s you can imagine the panic that ensued. A chum and self wrote a very rude letter to the editor, getting a bland reply saying words to the effect of:
"Sorry mate - that's the way it is.
If we hadn't published it, someone else would have."
I'll try and find the letter with the exact words......
So it's competition, competition, competition. And that was in the days of Fleet Street, "hot metal" and telegrams.......