The mainstream media has come under severe criticism for the way it reported the final hours of the story of the West Virginia miners who were trapped underground last week after an explosion.
Thirteen miners were trapped and rescuers first found the body of one miner who was killed by the blast. The other miners had been able to escape to another section of the mine and when they were finally located, initial reports said that they were alive. although mine officials were told 20 minutes later that only one of the 12 had survived, they did not release the correct information for another three hours.
The three-hour time period that the erroneous information was believed to be true occurred in the early morning hours when many of the country's newspapers went to print. The next morning headlines such as "alive" or "Miracle" blazed from the front pages of many dailies. During those early morning hours, the cable networks showed the families of the trapped miners celebrating the miracle that their loved ones had survived the deadly mine disaster.
For years, the mainstream media operated with near total immunity from criticism of any kind. The industry took great pride in exposing wrongdoing in government and industry, except of course their own. But with the advent of U.S. talk radio and the Internet, those days are fortunately long gone. There are endless venues where the media can and are held accountable for their mistakes and wrongdoing.
Nonetheless, it is difficult to understand how the media could have acted any differently from how they did in the wake of the erroneous report that 12 miners were alive. The media didn't, and couldn't be expected, to have entered the mine or have direct communication with the rescue team that had found the men. The media's information came from both mine officials and the Governor of West Virginia. More importantly, the families of the trapped miners had been told that the men were alive and were celebrating where they all had gathered to wait for news. as Fox News' Geraldo Rivera put it, "We didn't tell the families what happened; the families told us what happened." Even in hindsight it seems difficult to see how the media could report that the news of the miners was not known while the families were reacting to the news that their family members were found alive.
Some journalists were skeptical and used such phrases as "unconfirmed reports say" or "as reported by CNN" but even so it is unlikely that anyone who read about, heard or saw what the families were doing and how they were acting during that three-hour time period would have paid any attention to anything that indicated that the initial reports might not be factual.
The media could not have acted any differently from the way they did. Their error was exacerbated by the inordinate amount of time that officials withheld what actually happened from the families and the media and the fact that newspapers were printed prior to the truth coming out. an important fact was that the families and those who were closest to the miners were not relying on the media to inform them as to what happened.
There are clearly so many better things to get the media for.
and. . .
The american Thinker published an article by Paul Jackson entitled, "Canada's Liberals Blame america". Jackson wrote in part:
"Then [Carolyn] Parrish went on TV and stamped (sic) on a doll-like image of Bush. Yet again, nothing happened.
Only when Parrish criticized her own boss, Martin, did the prime minister admonish her and kick her out of the Liberal caucus."
It is refreshing to see the truth about how Carolyn Parrish and the Liberals parted company. Much of the Liberal-leaning mainstream Canadian media provided a revisionist history of the mouthy former MP's exit from the Liberal caucus. There have been several reports about how Parrish's "Bush-stomping" was the reason for her being forced to sit as an independent. The reality was that she was not thrown out until she said that she wouldn't shed a tear if Martin lost the next election and that the PM's advisors could all go to hell.
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