Disaster Undermined

Readers of most editions of the San Antonio Express-News were heartened by the front-page news Wednesday morning that 12 of 13 miners trapped for a day and a half in a coal mine near Tallmansville, W.Va., had been rescued. The Express-News -- and many newspapers throughout the nation -- carried wire reports quoting West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who told The Associated Press: "They told us they...

NEW YORK The Associated Press, which carried to newspapers around the world false reports on trapped miners being rescued in West Virginia late Tuesday night, said in a statement this afternoon that it had reported "accurately" based on information "provided by credible sources--family members and the governor." The statement by Mike Silverman, the news agency's managing editor, read: "AP was...

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. (AP) – High on a tree-shaded hill beside the Sago Baptist Church, the moss-covered inscription on a weathered tombstone reads: "Sometime we will understand." There is so much the people of this central Appalachian coal community are waiting to understand: How an explosion two miles into a mountain had trapped 13 of their men and how someone could tell them that 12 of the...

SAGO, W. Va., Jan. 4 - The mistaken information last night that 12 of 13 miners trapped in a West Virginia coal mine had been saved, when in fact 12 were dead and only one was alive, came through a series of miscommunications among rescue workers and others exhausted from more than 30 hours of searching, and desperate for a good ending to a tragic situation, the president of the mining company...

Newspapers, wire services and cable news networks all failed in one degree or another to do their jobs properly when they reported that 12 men had survived the coal mine disaster in West Virginia, media critics and chastened editors say. The collective failure was most apparent Wednesday morning on front pages across the nation. Headlines, including in about 45% of USA TODAY's 2.2 million copies...

It's painful to watch television news producers try to figure out the relative importance of the unfolding stories of the 13 trapped miners in West Virginia, and the more than 13 trapped Congressmen in Washington. Sending Rita Cosby and Anderson Cooper to the site of the mineshaft tragedy, where cameras can record family members' every painful reaction, is in the great ghoulish tradition of...