Lori Falce: When is it too soon for criticism?

On Wednesday night, a tragedy happened.

In the skies over Washington, D.C., an American Airlines commercial plane out of Kansas was approaching Reagan Washington National Airport. A Black Hawk military helicopter was on a training exercise. The two aircraft collided and crashed into the Potomac River. Rescue efforts quickly turned to recovery operations. All 67 people between the two craft died.

It was a terrible loss. The plane included more than a dozen figure skaters fresh from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita. Coaches and former pairs world champions Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova of Russia had just watched their son Max, 23, compete. NPR reported he flew home safely Monday. His parents did not.

The helicopter had three people on board. The three Army soldiers had families and friends and communities that care about them.

As I watched television coverage, I appreciated the restraint shown by many of the reporters and those interviewed as they tried to avoid giving answers too soon or asking questions too early. Major events such as a plane crash — or a train derailment or bridge collapse — are an exercise in balance. Journalists try to get the whos and whats and whens as soon as possible while recognizing whys and hows can take longer to discover.

But there are always those who do not wait for confirmation or investigation before speaking to events.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump appeared to blame the military flight crew and air traffic control for the incident in a post to his Truth Social platform.

“Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane,” he posted.

These are doubtless questions federal investigators will pursue as they reconstruct the fateful events.

In a news conference Thursday, the president followed up with blame for the Biden and Obama administrations, claiming diversity, equity and inclusion hiring “could have” caused the collision. He said former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was “a disaster” who ran the department “right into the ground with his diversity.”

There is no evidence to support this, something Trump nodded to when asked during the news conference, brushing off direct questions with, “it’s under investigation.” So how could he point to diversity as the culprit?

“Because I have common sense,” he said.

Other people, including Buttigieg, are pointing to potential failures in the transition to Trump’s administration.

“One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe,” Buttigieg said.

Some information circulating on social media is accurate. An acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration was only appointed after the crash. The previous administrator bowed out Jan. 20, and a permanent nomination to fill that role hasn’t been made. There have been hiring freezes and the end of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee.

But if it is too soon for Trump to say what caused the crash, it is likewise too soon to blame him for it.

It is not too soon to ask questions. It is not too soon to demand accountability. It is not too soon to say anything that could have contributed to the problem needs to be corrected. But that must be done through reason and evidence rather than politics and finger-pointing.

Investigations involving airplane crashes — really, any transportation disaster — take time. The summary report of the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023 was only released in July 2024. The Fern Hollow Bridge collapsed in January 2022; the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report was released in March 2024.

Answers are not something that arrive overnight. Reporters need to understand that. The public needs to understand that.

But so do politicians. Because chumming the waters with hypotheses in an authoritative voice helps no one.