[Industrialblog,
January 5, 2006]
No excuse
A note on the media's handling of the West Virginia mining disaster.
1. There's no excuse for getting the story wrong. That's Journalism 101. You must confirm information independently. That's why many newspapers used to have TWO wire services ... AP and UPI. One would confirm the other.
2. Most of what we see is no longer news, and no longer professional journalism, but entertainment and advocacy.
3. If you think you're ready to excuse journalists based on the facts of this case, see rule 1.
1. There's no excuse for getting the story wrong. That's Journalism 101. You must confirm information independently. That's why many newspapers used to have TWO wire services ... AP and UPI. One would confirm the other.
2. Most of what we see is no longer news, and no longer professional journalism, but entertainment and advocacy.
3. If you think you're ready to excuse journalists based on the facts of this case, see rule 1.
Bill, I'm not sure how "confirm information independently" would work in this case. I've never studied jounalism, so I don't know how this is officially defined. Would it require that a reporter slip through the police cordons, sneak past the folks at the entrance to the mine, don an air pack and helmet, and scurry down into the mine to check the condition of the miners directly? The flow of information was controlled in a straight-line fashion, with official word coming from the end of the line - and the official word, for three hours, was that there were 12 men alive.
Even now, has any reporter bothered to check the pulses of the allegedly "dead" men? If not, then what independent conformation have they gotten? Is the official word of a coroner any more reliable than the official word from the officials at the rescue site?
The alternative, or course, is not to run the story at all, or any story, until and unless independent confirmation can be obtained. And how far does this stricture apply? Do statements made by, say, the President in State of the Union addresses need to be independently confirmed before they are reported?
If the situation had gone the other way and twelve men had actually come out of the mine alive while newspapers were still being cautious about the situation, I can imagine the jeers and derision that would have been directed at the media for being "ye of little faith". Actually, we don't need to imagine - the erroneous articles have also preserved a record of comments made to that effect by people who believed that a miracle had happened in spite of the doubts of the Godless media.
I've moved to Ithaca, NY. I also don't get cable service. I'm not trolling at all.