Dudley Henriques wrote:
The press on the other hand, for reasons of their own, in many cases
involving our last moments as pilots, choose to emphasize the romance and
completely neglect the realities.

You are of course ignoring the fact that it wasn't "the press" who said
he avoided a swimming pool at the end. It was the public - eyewitnesses.
That big, bad "press" simply reported what the eyewitnesses said.
Strangely enough, that's exactly what they're supposed to do.

Certainly eyewitnesses get things wrong at times. But what would you
have the reporter do - balance what the eyewitnesses reported with the
speculation of a few Usenet pilots who weren't there?

I think an unbiased reader can determine who is more responsible here -
the journalist reporting objectively what witnesses said, or a Usenet
poster (Mr. Schnerd) making an uninformed and potentially libelous
accusation such as the pilot "was circling his father's house when he
ran dry." Not that you find many unbiased readers in Usenet...