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 only one.
"We had the governor of the state giving us the thumbs up, we had a congresswoman (Rep. Shelly Moore Capito) confirming 12 were alive, we had multiple sources say they had talked to rescue people who said they were alive," Cooper said in a phone interview Wednesday.
Others misreported
CNN was not the only news organization to make the mistake.
Fox News Channel and MSNBC did, too, as well as most of the nation's newspapers.
Many ran jubilant headlines. An early edition of the Houston Chronicle reported that one miner had been found dead. A later edition included the report that 12 had been rescued.
"When the initial, erroneous, news broke that 12 miners were alive, we changed the front page between editions," said Chronicle managing editor John Wilburn. "Three hours later, around 2 a.m. (CDT) when the correct info moved, the press run was almost complete and the newsroom had all gone home. It was too late to change the story."
According to Poynteronline, the Web site for the Poynter Institute, a journalism training center, the Boston Globe scrapped 30,000 papers and got out 145,000 papers (its circulation is more than 400,000) with the correct story.
The wrong call on the miners story recalls other news gaffes such as when Fox News Channel incorrectly stated, back in April, that the pope had died.
These mistakes reflect changes in the way news is delivered. Due to the Internet and 24-hour cable news, competition to break stories now exists around the clock.
"In theory, in an ideal world, journalists have a responsibility not to release news that hasn't been confirmed," said Garth Jowett, a University of Houston journalism professor. "But we're looking now at a totally new news cycle. We're looking at a 15-minute news cycle, thanks to cable. As a result, they just let it rip."
To its credit, CNN was the first to correct its mistake with the miners story. Fox and MSNBC, in fact, had left the story entirely, the latter showing infomercials.
The man doing the unenviable correction was the man who had done the original announcement. Shortly after delivering the news that the miners had survived, Cooper suspected something was wrong.
"After a while, once there wasn't a press conference, I started saying on the air, 'I wonder why this hasn't happened,' and when I saw only one ambulance come out, you start to ask questions in your mind," said Cooper.
"But you can only quote who you can quote short of going down into the mine ourselves, which frankly we requested, as well. Clearly at 12:30 a.m. (EST), mining officials knew only one miner had survived, and they now say they should have come forward then."
'There was no miracle'
Showing the good and the bad of instantaneous, always-on news, Cooper was less able to report – no mining officials were talking – than to rely on information from a compelling passer-by.
"There's only one person alive," Lynette Roby, a mother flanked by her two boys, told Cooper at about 1:45 a.m. CDT. "All the time we heard there was a miracle, and there was no miracle."
Cooper asked the appropriate question: From whose lips did she hear that the miners were dead? The woman said, "the head of the mining company." The story was soon corroborated by another family member, who quoted "mine officials." Then state officials.
Cooper showed his indignant side. He lamented how family members could have endured such a roller-coaster ride. "You hear about the fog of war," he said on the air, "but this was not a war." No, but live TV was at the mercy of company officials unwilling to discuss how events unfolded. The fog was the result of miscommunication.
