Imagine if America's mainstream media was a racing car. It isn't difficult -- racing driver Ken Hamilton drove just such a car.

In May, 1982, Hamilton turned up for qualifying at Indianapolis with possibly the ugliest, most maladroit vehicle ever to invade that city's famed speedway. Heavy and bulky, his Eagle Aircraft Flyer, as it was called, lumbered around the 2.5 mile oval like an enormous, crippled insect. Hamilton decided to withdraw from that year's Indy 500 before a single lap of the race was run. From its aerodynamics to its engine, everything about the Flyer was wrong.

But probably not as wrong as the U.S. press has been in explaining the death this year of NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt.

Before we study the latest reports, following this week's release of NASCAR's six-month investigation into the fatal crash, let's review some preceding coverage, including some Web-generated response. (See Racing Past the Truth and Media Skid on NASCAR Reporting for OJR's first reports on the crash controversy.)

For days after Earnhardt's crash at the Daytona 500 in February, the Associated Press stuck limpet-like to the claim that his Chevrolet 'slammed head-on into a concrete wall at 180 mph.' Head-on? AP reporters and editors literally missed the angle on this story. Turns out that angle was about 57 degrees. Before an autopsy had been completed, The Indianapolis Star (along with dozens of other papers) took as gospel the speculative word of Dr. Steve Bohannon, head of emergency services for the 500, that Earnhardt died of a whiplash-induced skull injury. (In April, Bohannon -- whose various off-the-cuff analyses helped confuse early reporting -- admitted he'd been too quick to offer opinions. 'I was trying to answer the questions the media and the public had to the best of my ability and I think I speculated more than I should have,' he said. 'Sometimes you should just say it's too early to speculate.') A court-ordered investigation that supported the whiplash theory -- based on photographs of the Earnhardt autopsy, and in absence of any examination of Earnhardt's car, seatbelts, or even helmet -- became the media's accepted version of how Earnhardt died, and inspired media demands that NASCAR force drivers to wear HANS (head and neck safety) restraints. And the Web seethed. A typical reaction to mainstream coverage came from Dave Hillman just two days after the fatal crash: 'It seems like reporter after reporter is doing commentary on whether or not he should have been wearing the HANS device or that something else could have been done to prevent the tragedy. ... I am beginning to believe that the real tragedy is when people who do not have a clue about something, e.g., some news reporters, suddenly become 'experts' -- how many of these people could spell NASCAR a week ago?'

In Atlanta on Tuesday, NASCAR delivered its substantial, seemingly well-researched findings. According to independent investigators appointed by NASCAR, Earnhardt died of a basal skull injury caused by a blow to the back of the head -- not a whiplash injury. The report, which relied largely on an autopsy performed on Earnhardt (although the authors were denied access to autopsy photographs) offered as major factors in Earnhardt's death a broken seatbelt and a collision with the car of Ken Schrader just prior to striking Daytona's unforgiving concrete wall. The interplay of these events, investigators found, caused Earnhardt's helmet to tilt forward during the crash, allowing his exposed head to strike the metal roll cage inside the cockpit, and possibly the steering wheel.

The report must have come as a surprise to the Orlando Sentinel, which on Aug. 10 declared that NASCAR's investigation would reveal 'safety problems in the design of the race cars, according to reliable sources close to the investigation.' The Sentinel?s 'reliable sources' also proved not to be so on the cause of death: 'The sources also said the investigators essentially confirm the findings of the court-appointed independent expert who determined Earnhardt died of a sudden head-whip action when his car hit the wall Feb. 18 in the Daytona 500.'

The Sentinel story whipped around the United States via AP and Reuters, and -- like every other unreliable element in the whole Earnhardt saga -- quickly became an established truth. Dave Van Dyck of FOXSports combined equal parts outrage, confusion, bluster, and deep moral certainty in a column following the Sentinel's claims. 'So NASCAR's long and supposedly exhaustive investigation into Dale Earnhardt's death concluded what most everyone knew all along,' he roared. 'The neck and brain cannot survive a head-on impact with a cement wall at 180 mph.'

What on earth is Dave taking about? Earnhardt was never in such a crash. According to the NASCAR report (and to anybody with eyes), his car 'hit the wall at a heading angle of approximately 55 - 59 degrees.' That?s 31 - 35 degrees shy of 'head-on.' And the impact? The No. 3 Chevrolet?s 'velocity changed by approximately 42 - 44 mph.' (Interestingly, few news outlets reported the relatively low velocity-change figure, preferring to run the speed at which Earnhardt approached the wall: 157 - 160 mph.)

To test their figures, the investigators smashed a vehicle identical to Earnhardt's into a concrete block at 39.5 mph, at an angle of 57.1 degrees. Damage to the vehicle duplicated the damage to Earnhardt's, right down to the 3-inch rearward displacement of the engine. (See page 56 of Tab 1 of the Official Accident Report -- No. 3 Car.) How did Dave react? The day the report was released, he wrote: 'It took experts and pictures to conclude the obvious: Hitting a cement wall nearly head-on at 170 mph can be fatal.' When you?re in a hole, Dave, the first thing you should do is quit digging.

ESPN's Jerry Bonkowski was another welded to the idea that the Earnhardt crash was something other than it appeared. His pre-NASCAR report prediction: 'When all is said and done and the results come out ... I'm sure the final outcome is going to be just what appears on the surface: the cause of Earnhardt's death was simply nothing more than a head-on accident into a wall at 170 mph.' In another column Bonkowski boosted Earnhardt's impact speed to 190 mph. What is it about angles and basic physics that these people just don't get?

Months in advance of NASCAR's report, the observant forum at Vettes Online had dissected many of the flaws evident in Earnhardt coverage. Sparked by the posting on their site of an earlier OJR story, the Corvette fans revealed abundant media-analysis skills. 'From what I could tell, it didn't look like Earnhardt hit the wall that hard and I was shocked to find out that he died as a result,' posted a user know as Tedster.

'When I read the account of the accident, described as a head-on collision with the wall at 180 mph, I just attributed it to sloppy reporting. What I saw was his car sliding mostly sideways in the direction of traffic, but heading up the banking toward the wall. The component of his velocity in the direction of the wall appeared to be just a fraction of his total speed. I figured he must have smacked his head against the roll cage or something freakish like that and waited for the official reports.'

The official report is in, Tedster. You were absolutely right. Expect some tuition requests from Bonkowski and Van Dyck.

Other posters zeroed in on the media's rush to judgment: 'I don't think it makes a difference whether the subject is politics or car racing. The mainstream media takes so many liberties just to report the story first that it's almost sickening,' complained one Vette fan. 'Now that the news of the fluke seatbelt failure has been released everybody can rest assured that their eyes weren't lying,' observed another. 'It wasn't the head-on super crash the media reported -- it was the crash we all thought we saw.' Yet another summarized: 'Our news media seem to have a need to over-simplify, pre-judge, then pontificate a solution to EVERYTHING.'

Pontification, thy name is Washington Post. Liz Clarke wasted the first six paragraphs of her report in Wednesday's Post hectoring NASCAR over (among other things) its refusal to require drivers to wear HANS devices. 'Such devices ... have been proven to give drivers a better chance of surviving violent crashes,' Clarke wrote. But according to the investigation, Earnhardt didn't die of a whiplash injury, the type that HANS devices aim to prevent. We await Clarke's next campaign: the fight to equip firemen with bulletproof vests.

Clarke's Post colleague Michael Wilbon deserves notice for this sentence: 'If you were expecting the Earnhardt investigation to yield a way to prevent death in racing, you're sadly naive.' If Wilbon believes anyone outside of the Post's nannyish newsroom actually expected the investigation to end all racing deaths, he's just plain sad.

Tim Cowlinshaw and Terry Blount of the Dallas Morning News just couldn't believe the sheer gigantic scale of the whole massive investigation. It cost one million dollars! Blount described it as 'the most extensive and costly crash investigation in the history of auto racing.' Cowlinshaw dubbed Earnhardt 'auto racing's most famous fatality.' Clearly, neither writer has ever heard of triple world Formula One champion Ayrton Senna -- he was slightly more famous than Earnhardt -- who died in Italy in 1994, prompting an investigation that cost tens of millions of dollars. Formula One racing spends millions every year on safety investigations.

Talking about Dallas, some readers were angered by the first Earnhardt piece I wrote for OJR, which drew comparisons between the racer's death and that of John F. Kennedy. No disrespect was meant. Since then, many other writers have made similar observations; senior NASCAR identities even compared the organization's Earnhardt investigation to the Warren Report. But did NASCAR's investigators really have to hire the same television production company that restored the Zapruder film to enhance video evidence of the Earnhardt crash footage?

The main issue here, though, is what to do with professional mainstream journalists who can't tell the difference between head-on and angled impact, who turn speculation into truth, who haven't heard of internationally famous people and events, who advocate whiplash protection to save drivers from blunt force injury, who won't yield to compelling evidence, and who are easily outwitted by a bunch of Chevy drivers thinking aloud at an obscure Web site.

Here's an idea: start a new newspaper where these journalists can pool their skills. Call it the Daily Eagle Aircraft Flyer.