I very much agree with the call for respect and retraint, and with that in mind would like to offer a couple of observations which I hope are seen as constructive.
Firstly, I share the general distaste for the media and their methods, but in this instance have a greater measure of tolerance than usual. This is a national-scale tragedy, and there is an understandable demand for more information and understanding. Editors will have set expectations of minutes on air and column inches to be filled, and the whole machine bursts into life to deliver them. Being inherently lazy, journalists will latch on to whatever or whoever they can find to provide "content". Pprune is a source for sure, as are any "experts" who are prepared to self certify their credentials and qualifications to justify their views being given the oxygen of publicity. Enough has already been written about the various individuals and their opinions, but an early learning emerging is that there was a need for some authoritative spokesperson to front for the display "industry". BADA made a reasonable start with the statement on their website, but a statement on a website, however sensible, cannot gain traction without a face and some advocacy and willingness to address reasonable questions in a reasonable and measured way. Captain "Winkle" Brown has attracted some criticism on here for a comment attributed to him that "it looked as if it could have been pilot error". Leaving aside for a moment his credentials, and the fact that he was an eye witness, even my mother (who is not a pilot!) thinks it could have been pilot error having seen the videos on television! The videos are particularly graphic, and whilst inconclusive as to cause at this stage, we should not be naive in thinking that people would not be reaching similar views as Winkle but for the media. In fact, I do believe the media are, for the most part, trying to establish what went wrong, as that is what their readers, not unreasonably, want to know. The Daily Hate story about an orange flash from the engine, whilst in fact spurious, did to my mind represent a sincere effort to shed light on the cause (and of course provides further evidence of journalistic laziness).
Which brings me to my second thought, which concerns risk management. The aircraft was not over Shoreham on some frolic: it was taking part in a planned event, at an authorised location, with a sanctioned display programme, a qualified pilot authorised to fly the display, and an aircraft believed to be fit for purpose. (The AAIB may differ when they investigate, but I would be surprised if any of these statements turn out to be untrue.) Part of each of the many individual approvals and authorisations which enabled the aircraft to be flying at Shoreham would be a risk assessment. Whether implicit or explicit, the process would have recognised that there were various potential risks to the successful outcome of the display, and only as a result of these risks being assessed as sufficiently low would the approvals have been granted. There could not at any stage however have been a belief that there was no risk, and in particular no belief that there was no risk that the aircraft could have an accident. In allowing an airport to operate at Shoreham, the local authority accepted the risk that there could be crashes, not just at the airfield, but inevitably in the surrounding area. In allowing there to be an air show, the local authority and the airport operators clearly accepted a higher degree of risk, and so on. Please note, I am not suggesting those killed and injured had accepted the risk, but trying to highlight that the responsibility for this accident could not solely rest with the pilot , even if it is eventually determined that his actions in some way contributed. Whatever a pilots experience, skill and judgement, displaying fast jets is a high stress, high workload activity. Humans sometimes make mistakes in such situations. As well as being entirely foreseeable, and sadly not without precedent, no risk assessment could overlook the possibility of pilot error. Should it turn out to be the case here that a mistake was made, it is very important that it is widely understood that the pilot would not be solely responsible. If the debate on Pprune can help to bring about a wider understanding of this shared responsibility, it will have served a very valuable purpose.