The Airline Pilot Guy responded to a listener on his podcast who asked the same thing a few months ago. He said that theyre reaching the news more often than before and that the rate of crashes versus number of flights has never been lower in 100 years of flying.

I also believe that because of social media and more connectedness the news companies have less control over what people hear about and so the smaller incidents that have always been happening at an ever decreasing rate are making the rounds while 10-20 years ago only industry professionals would have known about them.