2005-2014

The West Virginia mine tragedy was an emotional whipsaw that ended up trapping the media – print and electronic – into authoritatively reported, but ultimately incorrect, stories. Hours after authorities announced that 12 coal miners believed to be alive were actually dead, millions awoke to newspaper headlines announcing "Miracle in the Mine" or "12 miners rescued" or simply "ALIVE!" How could...

SAGO, West Virginia (CNN) -- Just hours after news spread that 12 miners had been found alive, something wasn't right. A distraught woman, Lynette Roby, came out of the darkness and approached us with her kids while we were on air. It was a little before 3 a.m. There was this horror in Roby's eyes and this stunned outrage. She said 12 miners were dead, not alive. She said they had all been...

On Thursday, the 22th of December-2005, hundreds of Yemeni journalists launched a vital shift for a new period of time, which can be named as the period of perceiving the transfer of power and concerns of the cultured contemporary man. This principle (the peaceful transfer of power), closely linked to democracy, can remove the absolute individual governance from the path whether it is monarch...

Lloyd Peterson always wanted to be a journalist. At 15, he purchased a small printing press and began cranking out his own newspaper – The Elmora Globe in his boyhood home of Elizabeth, N.J. He delivered the 41/2- by 5-inch newspaper to his neighbors' mailboxes. The cost of local news in 1930: one penny. "I'd write about who's going to college or how they might pave North Avenue," said Peterson...

The Australian ruling elite has spent much of the holiday season eulogising the late Kerry Packer, who died December 26. Packer was Australia’s wealthiest individual, with a personal fortune estimated at $7 billion (US$5.1 billion) at the time of his death. His Publishing & Broadcasting Limited company has a range of interests spread across television, magazines, and casinos and gambling. Prime...

The Chronicle seemed to splatter itself with mud and wrap itself in honor almost all at once on Tuesday night. About 75,000 papers -- roughly a sixth of the circulation -- went out the next morning with the inspirational headline. " 'Miracle' in West Virginia." Forty-one hours after an explosion left 13 miners trapped, the accompanying story said, 12 were found alive. It's a tale that newspapers...

Our lead headline and story on the front page Wednesday were wrong, and we regret it. The headline, which varied in our three Triangle editions, and The Associated Press story said 12 coal miners in West Virginia had survived being trapped after a mine explosion. By the time the papers hit driveways, officials from International Coal Group Inc. had emerged to say the miners were dead. Newspapers...

Put yourself in the shoes of CNN's Anderson Cooper. He had heard that 12 West Virginia coal miners, all presumed dead, had been found, miraculously, alive. He had witnessed the jubilation occurring inside the Sago Baptist Church in Sago, W.Va. What more proof did he need? Two hours later, the shock clearly registered on his face, Cooper reported his error. There were not 12 survivors. There was...

It was the news everyone ached to hear: Twelve of 13 miners survived. But that information – which The Associated Press sent just before 11 p.m. Tuesday as most newspapers approached their final deadlines – was wrong. Three hours later, around 2 a.m. Dallas time, came the sad truth: Only one of 13 trapped West Virginia coal miners was found alive. But by then, many newspapers had finished their...

SAGO, W.Va. -- Amid outrage over conflicting reports from the deadly Sago mine disaster, the mining company's top executive said Wednesday that he regretted allowing family members to believe for hours that their loved ones had survived. A choked-up Ben Hatfield, chief executive of International Coal Group Inc., said company officials mistakenly allowed family jubilation "to go on longer than it...