Disaster Undermined

The News & Observer is incompetent or insensitive or irresponsible or just plain mean, depending on which of our readers you talked to about the paper's coverage of the West Virginia mine disaster. By now it's old news that The N&O ran on its front page Wednesday the incorrect story reporting that 12 miners had been rescued. "'Miracles happen in W.Va.': 12 miners found alive," proclaimed the large...

The Sentinel apologized on Thursday's front page for a headline and article in that space the day before, quoting relatives of 13 trapped West Virginia coal miners as saying, "They're alive!" All but one of the miners, it later turned out, were not alive. S. Atticum of Longwood, among others, found the apology unnecessary. "Your readers readily understand how upstream sources can get it wrong...

Contrary to the movies, hollering "Stop the presses!" all but never happens. But the mining tragedy last week demanded it. Front page designer Mark Friesen had left the newspaper about 11:30 p.m. Tuesday after revising Page One through the evening with updates from West Virginia. The banner headline read, "Joy as 12 miners found alive." As he walked into his Southwest Portland home, his wife was...

"I just want to let everyone know, this man is spying on you." With those words, a woman at the Sago Baptist Church has forced me to think about my profession in a different way – Am I a spy, or worse, a voyeur, a Peeping Tom into another person’s living hell? That’s not how we reporters like to think of ourselves, and mostly, I don’t think it’s fair. But I’ve seen enough covering last week’s mine...

NEW YORK When word mistakenly spread early Wednesday that 12 trapped miners in West Virginia had been found safe, the frenzy of rumor, hope, and unconfirmed reports swept through parts of the tight-knit area of Sago, W.V., within minutes. Meanwhile, at the command center monitoring the rescue attempt--inside a trailer-sized unit just 100 yards from the church where miner families had been...

A total of eight Tribune readers called me to comment on the problem that challenged and vexed newspapers across the country this week: false reports of 12 survivors in the Sago Coal Mine explosion instead of the one man who actually survived the disaster. Of the readers who called, six were amazed that The Tribune had the correct number of survivors and two were curious about the process that put...

THE Houston Chronicle's headline read: "Bells ring out for 12 rescued miners." It was an appropriately triumphant tout that 12 of the 13 men who had been trapped for 41 hours in a West Virginia coal mine would soon be going home to their worried families. Unfortunately, the headline and The New York Times story we published Wednesday on Page One were wrong, as we and other news media outlets...

For a few hours this week, it seemed the new year had started with a wondrous story. " 'They're alive,' " a headline Wednesday in one edition of the Rocky Mountain News trumpeted of the trapped West Virginia coal miners, reflecting the moving pictures on the cable networks late Tuesday night. The nation's heart had been with the men and their families. We were uplifted - and then crushed. Forget...

A few readers continue to take us to task this week for the erroneous front page story and headline that ran in some editions of Wednesday's newspaper proclaiming a miraculous rescue of 12 coal miners trapped underground in West Virginia. Why didn't The Atlanta Journal-Constitution go to greater lengths to confirm reports from family members and politicians that the miners had been found alive...

The imperfections of the newsgathering craft were glaring this week when television viewers and newspaper readers across the country were given a joyously miraculous survival story regarding trapped West Virginia coal miners. Unfortunately, that euphoric good-news story turned out to be wrong and had to be replaced by the tragic reality that only one of the 13 miners was rescued alive. Some in our...