None of us ever imagined that what the families had been told wasn’t the truth, that fate could be so cruel. Maybe we should have, but I don’t think any of us on the scene did. We were all exhausted and muddy and caught up in that joyful celebration.

I wrote more about this here.

My “there’s a dreadful unfilled hole in this story” moment came slightly earlier. I, sitting in my living room, heard coal company CEO Hatfield explaining – speculatively – that building an emergency “barrier” against dangerous fumes was the miners’ likely best/only defence.

His scepticism whether this could be practically possible was obvious. The “miracle” stories simply ignored his painstaking warnings in favor of their worthless scoop.
Good reporters are MEANT to thoughtfully incorporate significant previous information into fresh “updates”.
They didn’t get the “they’re alive!” reports in a vacuum.
The now justly celebrated response of the local MSM newspaper in NOT going for the sensational angle on its rolling website is proof that avoiding empty foolishness was easily possible.

However, once that news was out their jobs were to be reporters, a responsibility they clearly abdicated. In their desire to believe what was obviously a feel good story they took everything at face value. Anderson Cooper, Rita Cosby and Geraldo Rivera are as guilty as Judith Miller and Mary Mapes in that they wanted so bad to believe to be true a story they were supposed to be reporting on that they shunned any sense of objectivity and failed to a single question.

For example, I never saw any of the ask WHO delivered the news to the families? (Apparently, “they” now suffices as a source , something that all those people hauled in front of Fitzgerald’s grand jury should remember to say.) Then, having been told that all 12 miners had been found alive and were doing fine, an ambulance leaves with the first miner taken from the mine and a few minutes later Anderson Cooper tells us that he is unconscious. HELLO??? Couldn’t AC and company figure out that something didn’t add up? The woman that was reporting with him on CNN (her name escapes me right now) admitted, on camera to Cooper in the aftermath, that the even before the annoucement that all but one miner was dead EMS crews were grim faced and the state police wouldn’t even look at the reporters. Considering how an element such as that contrasted with the sense of euphoria among family members at the church, shouldn’t that have been another clue to take another look at things? But instead, we were treated to hard hitting reporting like the tour of the Salvation Army food truck. Was I, sitting in my living room hundreds of miles away, the only person who thought there was a hole in a story that claimed that a dozen people who had been trapped underground for 40+ hours in a cold mine filled with dangerous fumes would be taken to the church to eat before they were taken to a hospital?

For two days, given the opportunity, AC, RC, and GR had no problem asking hard questions of people like Hatfield or the Governor. Perhaps, if they should have shown a bit of that courage and used those abilities for just two hours early Wednesday morning, they wouldn’t look as foolish as they do right now.

Oh and did you see, Jeff, I left you a Christmas present here?

The second part, which most everybody seems to be ignoring, is the sad state of mine operations in West Virginia. That mine has about a hundred of health and safety violations – so why the heck is it still open? Compared to the news fiasco, this part is far more significant. The British navy used to speak of the men who “went down to the sea in ships”; we still have our men who go down to the mines in elevators. It’s a hard way to make a living.

Did you ever write one of these about the WMD’s fiasco?

And, Jeff, you always proclaim your journalistic credentials, can i ask what you would have done if you were a reporter there outside the mine? When the entire community is dancing and praying in the background, the camera is rolling on you, and the anchor asks what’s happening “No nothing happening here, we’ve got no new updates – just some rumors but i won’t bother you with them”

The news i was listening to (BBC radio 4 Today program) constatly sourced the news to the families themselves. What more could they have done? maybe added a note of caution? perhaps.

This post is as dead-ended as those in the media who point to one dishonest blogger and write off the entire phenomenon.

CaptiousNut above called it an “honest mistake”. It wasn’t. It was an ignorant MSM mistake based on ignoring previous intelligence.

I watched CNN carefully before the “alive!” debacle, and it was my strongest non-specialist impression that coal company CEO Hatfield left only the faintest of faint hope for the survival of all or most of the miners. He was, I thought, using the concept of “miracle” correctly – i.e. that their survival would be against all rules of logic in the likely known circumstances, NOT just a desperately desired outcome.

All the “alive!” headlines – whether or not they came with smaller typeface “the families say” caveats – seemed totally disconnected to everything Hatfield had taken pains to explain about probabilities.

The correct screaming interim headline – taking into account the accidental, dreadful misinformation – SHOULD have been “How Could They Be Alive?”.

That would have satisfied the immediate demands for a fresh spin on an “aging” human agony story.

It would also have provided a valid holding angle for the subsequent tragic confirmation of the facts.

This is one of the most disgusting cases of the media inexcusably jumping the gun I can recall. Scepticism – the best thoughtful tool of all hacks – trumped by a worthless scoop.

Beth,
To answer your question, YES. Reporters ARE to inquire as to sources, and MUST report those sources. If GR,AC & their ilk were to couch their reporting in similar terms, their credibility would be far, far better.

As to the timeline – it seems now that the Co. DID inform, at approx 12:15 ~ 12:30. Why was the message ignored? Why did the “on site” media keep up the incorrect story for nearly 3 hours?

For those comments on “it’s about the miners” – no, this discussion isn’t. This is about the end of the chain of media events.

Jamie, excellent post, & excellent points. FWIW, I do “hail” from that area. The amazingly negative comments about the people living in small towns & small states reveal the true intellect of those posters. They can be safely ignored.

J

“A bunch of hicks yammering on their cellphones” – my my. Your snoot is showing. These “hicks” were, if I understand the situation correctly, probably mine employees.

[T]he CEO of the mining company [...] said that the erroneous “news” of 12 survivors was broadcast over some sort of open phone line from the rescue crew to the command station where mine officials and government officials were staged. The CEO made it clear in the press conference that everyone in the room listening in to the speakerphone heard the same thing and then rushed to make cell phone calls and inform the victims’ families.

Per Catherine, above, at 1:00 PM yesterday. Presumably the mine employees doing the “yammering” were of the same “hick” pedigree as the miners themselves. You of course are not a “hick” – just terribly insensitive on this point. Way to take the opportunity to use tragedy to further your elevated sense of social status.

Twelve people died. They were in West Virginia, which I’m guessing is very different from the place you hail from. Their lives were exactly as unlikely and precious as your own and mine, their loved ones will miss them as much as your loved ones would miss you, and the “hicks yammering” a very overly optimistic inference to those loved ones believed that they were alleviating pain rather than ultimately causing more of it. We all should take a lesson from this awful situation, but those journalists who credulously went with the “miracle” story without, as Jess noted, calling the command center, trying to reach the official spokespeople, or tracking down the provenance of the information ought to take a much more urgent one, since the damage they can do is far greater than anything you or I can accomplish with a cellphone.

The NYTimes did have a more nuanced headline by using “…families say,” but still published an erroneous front page story.

The blogosphere tends (and should) eschew the hierarchies, to allow the process of vetting sources to occur faster. Some would say that the hierarchy of having an editor et al, is safer, but the MSM does slip up, as we see happening more often, and the Web denizens can rapidly fill in the cracks.