2005-2014

How the events of Tuesday night and early Wednesday produced inaccurate newspaper headlines: Newspapers throughout the country, including the Akron Beacon Journal, reported in their Wednesday print editions that 12 trapped West Virginia miners were found alive. As we know now, that wasn't true. Here's how it happened: When the Beacon Journal initially went to press Tuesday night, at 11:30 p.m...

NEW YORK One day after most of the country's newspapers falsely reported that 12 trapped miners had been rescued in West Virginia, editors published on Thursday corrections, explanations, apologies or defensive statements about what had happened. Some editors offered their personal perspectives in interviews, with remarks ranging from we-did-nothing-wrong to "we're all sick about this." Toledo...

TV news people tossing around the word "miracle" is bad enough. Proclaiming a miracle with no verification is a travesty. Media credibility took another hit this week. Both electronic and print news outlets stumbled badly late Tuesday and early Wednesday with an emotionally charged factual error that was not corrected for three hours. Finger-pointing continues in the wake of the erroneous report...

WHEN IT comes to drugs, they used to say, speed kills. When it comes to journalism, they still say, speed kills reputations. In a horrible case in which journalistic prudence was spiked by the scramble to get the story first, the nation received the joyous news around midnight yesterday morning that 12 West Virginia miners had survived. In Philly, we went to sleep counting two victories - Penn...

In Philadelphia and much of the country yesterday, Americans awoke to newspaper front pages proclaiming, with varying degrees of certainty, that 12 of the West Virginia miners had been found alive. To a large degree, this unfortunate and embarrassing error was the result of bad timing. Word that family members had been told of the miners' survival moved on the Associated Press wire at 11:52 p.m...

EVERYONE WANTED a miracle, from the families of the trapped miners, to the mine company owners, to cable TV. When this miracle turned into a disaster, newspapers paid the price. It is hard to read the cruelly incorrect stories from Sago, W. Va., that were published in many Wednesday morning newspapers, including some early editions of the Globe, and not entertain grim thoughts about the challenge...

It might not quite have packed the punch of "Dewey Defeats Truman" or "Gore Wins." But TV reports and newspaper headlines Wednesday that mistakenly stated that 12 miners had been recovered alive from the rubble of a West Virginia mine explosion left journalists struggling to explain how such a massive inaccuracy could spread across the nation's news services. Newspapers in the center and Eastern...

It was another bruising episode for the news media, but this time caused not by scandalous behavior but by simple human error: Dozens of newspapers and television and radio stations reported late Tuesday and early yesterday that 12 trapped miners in a West Virginia coal mine had been found alive, only to learn later that the report was tragically wrong. "There's no getting around the fact that the...

(January 05, 2006) -- In the wake of the Sago mine tragedy, perhaps a new category of Pulitzer Prize should be created to honor the journalists or news managers who caution that a story is not ready for prime time or publication. Unfortunately, the winning reporter or editor would likely soon be out of a job at a big time network or newsroom. "Journalism," claimed former Washington Post publisher...

As Susan Smith went to bed last night, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was whizzing off the presses. "Miracle at Sago: 12 Miners Alive" blared across the top of Page One. A photograph of women embracing stretched across six columns. A report of the city's mayoral inauguration that day peeked out below the fold. Two-thirds of the front page appeared to exhale along with a region that had held its...