Scary Stories for Fun and Profit

Speaking of fact-checking, here's a headline on the AP:

Miami Airport Evacuated in Bomb Scare

Whoa. That's a big airport. Did they really evacuate all of MIA?

Read on:

A Miami International Airport terminal was evacuated early Monday after authorities found what appeared to be an explosive device at a security checkpoint.

"A possible explosive device showed up in an X-ray machine at the checkpoint," airport spokesman Greg Chin said. He said the Miami-Dade bomb squad was investigating and had no further information.

Passengers were evacuated from Terminal F, which serves United Airlines domestic and international flights.

What they meant to say was "Concourse F," which is a part of the airport, not the entire airport terminal itself.

The Miami Herald follows up.

Miami International Airport's concourse F was briefly closed early Monday morning due to reports of a suspicious package. It was a false alarm.

Hundreds were evacuated from the airport as a bomb squad checked what Greg Chin, a MIA spokesman, described as a possible makeshift explosive device. The package turned out to be harmless.

United Airlines' early morning flights were delayed.

I suppose the confusion is understandable; at some airports concourses are terminals...right? What I find a bit silly is the breathless coverage of airports because we're still overly touchy about anything remotely suspicious. And excuse me for being cynical, but the local stations go positively ecstatic over stories like this; it justifies their spending millions of dollars on camera trucks and satellite feeds and breathless blow-dried reporters so they can boost their ad rates. It's one thing to be cautious; it's another to exploit it for political and economic profit.

Update: The contents of the suspicious package were harmless, all right, according to the Miami Herald. They were "cremains;" human ashes in an box, which are permitted to be carried either in checked or carry-on luggage. That's "carry-on," not carrion...