PressThink: Wrong When the Governor is Wrong

Wrong When the Governor is Wrong

"CNN is so empty-handed in documenting how it knew the men were alive that the producers resort to playing audio tapes of a dispatcher's voice at some unidentified ambulance service, and someone named 'caller' is saying... that's what we heard, yeah, 12 alive."

(This originally appeared in the Huffington Post)

There’s a little detail in the misreporting of the West Virgina miners’ deaths that you should know about. (A good overview is here, and here. Links to the explanations editors gave are here and also here, where the ombudsmen bring the lumber.)

What Becky Wagoner, the reporter for the local daily, did is stay put. She was covering the rescue for the Inter-Mountain newspaper of Elkins, W.Va., which has a newsroom population of 21 and a circulation of 11,000 or so. Instead of running to the church, where the “human” story was supposed to be, and where the families said they had heard the miners were alive, she remained in the briefing room where all previous updates had been received. (This is according to Editor & Publisher.)

“We heard that they were found alive through CNN, then it snowballed to ABC, then FOX and it was like a house afire,” recalled Wagoner, who said she was at the media information center set up by the mine’s operators, International Coal Group Inc., when the reports spread.
“A lot of the media left to go to the church where family members were located, but I stayed put because this was where every official news conference was given—and we never got anything official here,” she said.

No update about miners being found alive appeared on the Inter-Mountain’s web site, said Wagoner and her editor, Linda Skidmore.

What Becky Wagoner did (and didn’t do) is a small detail, but not an insignificant one. Some journalists, like Amanda Bennett, the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer—which reported “Joy at mine: 12 are alive”— have been asking:. “Was there anybody who was there who got it any differently?”

There was, but are you interested?

The reporters and camera crews fled to the church because that’s where the story was. Wagoner stayed in the place where the information was being given out.

Anderson Cooper was on the air at the time for CNN; Jonathan Klein is his boss and the head of CNN/US. They reported for three hours the wrong information: that twelve miners were found alive. AP and other networks did the same.

Defending their performance, CNN people have said that primary responsibility rests with the mining company, which did not correct the false reports for two and a half hours, and elected officials, who passed along faulty information. I agree with that. As I wrote in my previous post about this: “I don’t blame the news media for initially false information about the West Virginia mining disaster. I blame confusion, exhaustion, human emotion and poor decision-making by company officials.”

But then CNN people (like their counterparts at the AP) have made a second observation: that their mistake was unavoidable. This I do not agree with. (Neither does Howard Kurtz. Also see the Reliable Sources transcript, and Greg Mitchell’s column in E & P.)

If a producer from CNN had been hanging out with Becky Wagoner, trying to get someone on the record with the news that the miners were alive, and discovering, as she did, that no one from the rescue operation would confirm it, the story that went out Tuesday night might, possibly, have been different.

Sunday night I watched CNN Presents, an hour-long special recapping the Sago mine disaster. When they get to the part where the network “learns” that a miracle had happened, and the men were alive, the producers of the one-hour special have no tape to show. There is no footage of an authorized knower saying it. Nobody ever announced it. We see people rejoicing who said they had heard about it. Townspeople are seen thanking god. There are clips of the Governor, but he’s talking about the one man who was rescued. CNN is so empty-handed in documenting how it knew the men were alive that the producers resort to playing audio tapes of a dispatcher’s voice at some unidentified ambulance service, and someone named “caller” is saying… that’s what we heard, yeah, 12 alive.

Gal Beckerman of CJR Daily made a similar point about the nation’s newspapers and their faulty headlines. “A close reading of the articles themselves tells the tale of how journalists bungled the story,” he wrote. “In most, there are no sources at all for the information; in some, the sources are the rumors spread by frantic family members. Those sorts of sources are hardly a solid basis for headlines screaming, ‘They’re Alive!’” Or for concluding: this mistake was unavoidable.

Klein’s speech to CNN staff ought to be: “We screwed this up, although we came out looking okay because the Governor was wrong, and we had a wrong Congress person too. Their sources were as bad as our sources.

“We’re CNN; we’re supposed to be more reliable than anyone. Our slogan isn’t ‘Wrong when the Governor’s wrong.’ Statesmen are supposed to watch us to find out what’s going on in their world.

“It is unacceptable to me that for three hours of live television, with our top talent presiding, we’ve got twelve men alive reported as truth, and we never saw those men, no ambulances for them ever moved, and we had no real confirmation. Just a bunch of people saying: yeah, that’s what we heard.

“No one from inside the rescue operation was putting his name, or his ass on the line with those facts. But we did not report that. Yet we put our ass and our name on the line, and Anderson’s, when we had almost no facts.

“Totally unccceptable…” Klein ought to be saying. And if I’m Anderson Cooper I’m standing right next to him nodding my head. But this is what Cooper actually said in a first-person “Behind the Scenes” account he wrote on Jan. 5:

For those of us in the media, I’m not sure what we could have done to keep this news from spreading like it did.

Well, I’m not sure, either. But it might have helped, a little, if CNN had reported “the families say they’ve been told their loved ones are alive, and the governor said he heard the same thing, but we have gotten no confirmation from anyone connected with the rescue operation.” If they had stuck a microphone in front of Becky Wagoner of the Inter-Mountain newspaper she might have said something like that. Cooper wrote:

When you have the governor of the state giving you the thumbs-up, a congresswoman talking about this on air, hundreds of relatives and family members jubilant, some of who received calls from mining officials, it’s tough to ignore what they’re saying.
There is only so much you can do short of seeing firsthand who is alive and who isn’t. We made requests to have access to the rescue operation, but they were denied.

At some point, you have to rely on officials and the people you come in contact with. We had more reporters on this story and in more places than anyone else — Randi Kaye, Joe Johns, Sanjay Gupta interviewing the doctor.

“There is only so much you can do” says CNN’s franchise player. My understanding of a network anchorman’s job during a live news event is to keep track of what we know, how we know it, what we don’t know yet, and what we’re learning for the first time. Journalistically, this is why we need anchors. Cooper showed no signs of bearing this skill, and yet he seems satisfied that he did all he could.

And from the boss of the operation there is this, via Editor & Publisher:

Most bullish of all was CNN president Jonathan Klein, who offered no apologies and hailed his cable network’s performance, which resulted in three hours of faulty coverage. He said the sourcing of the report that the men were alive was “pretty solid,” adding: “This situation points to the strength of TV news coverage because we were able to correct as better information developed.”

When at 3:00 am a townswoman walked up to Anderson Cooper and told him—live—that he had been reporting a false miracle this showed, according to Klein, the strength of CNN. As Jeff Jarvis has written, with coverage like that, “It’s not the news that’s live; it’s the process of figuring out what to believe that’s live.”

And the figuring out goes on. So if someone tells you it was unavoidable, mention Becky Wagoner, will you?

After Matter: Notes, reactions & links…

Jeff Jarvis wrote his column for the Guardian about the miner’s deaths: Reporting the truth is a collaborative process. (Jan. 16, 2006)

In this age of instant communication, ubiquitous connectivity, and constant coverage, the public is put in the position of having to judge the news and its reliability for themselves. Like a good reporter, the public must be sceptical and must learn that sometimes it takes time for the facts to catch up with a story. So the public has to decide whether to trust the news they hear. The public is the editor.

Derek Rose was there for the New York Daily News. He writes a first-person account at his blog that is worth your time:

And where are the other miners, we wonder? It must be 2 a.m. or so by now, about two hours since the families first got their update. They are probably being treated and triaged at the scene, we figure.
As it gets later and later, we’re realizing something is wrong. But I don’t think any of us ever thought the other 11 miners were dead. I certainly didn’t. (Alexa tells me later that “not for a minute” did she think the miners might be dead. “Not even for a minute. How could you make a mistake like that [telling the families their loved ones were alive]? How could that happen?”)

Read the rest. Also, in the comments Derek has some criticisms of this post.

Felicity Barringer, New York Times, e-mails PressThink. You can read my reply.

Jay: You are critical of journalists in West Virginia for not being rigorous about confirming the initial report that the miners were alive. I’m not sure you mentioned that the report originated with relay communications from inside the mine and was delivered to the jam-packed command center by squawk box. Have you reported on Mr. Hatfield’s description of how the erroneous report was widely disseminated by people in the command center who had heard it from rescuers within the mine?
I was in West Virginia, where cell phone and Internet connections are haphazard, when you first posted, and I had a few other things to do. So tell me: Have you mentioned the company’s official explanation? It seems relevant, doesn’t it?

I’m also curious about the hypothetical formulation that you recently put in the mouth of the CNN executive, which is written as if incorporating widely-known “facts.” You write: “It is unacceptable to me that for three hours of live television, with our top talent presiding, we’ve got twelve men alive reported as truth, and we never saw those men, no ambulances for them ever moved, and we had no real confirmation. Just a bunch of people saying: yeah, that’s what we heard.”

FYI: a stream of ambulances arrived at the mine as the reports of the “miracle” began circulating. They briefly blocked the road from the mine office to the Sago church, forcing at least one journalist to run between the two venues in search of information.

Since you’ve had several days to find out whether ambulances were, in fact, dispatched, I’m sure you regret the inaccurate impression left by your column. And I’m confident you will correct it as visibly as you disseminated it, and explain where you got, and how you confirmed, the information that you give the color of fact. As I recall, standards for those reporting on the press are at least as high as those to which you hold other journalists.

Regards,

Felicity Barringer

Thanks, Felicity. Standards are at least as high, yes, for those who write about the press. I told Barringer I would have more of a reply in a day or two.

Howard Kurtz in an online Q & A with washingtonpost.com readers (Jan. 9):

Since most journalists are saying they did nothing wrong, I can only assume that they would do the same thing in a similar situation in the future. What, exactly, would be wrong with saying: “We’re hearing conflicting reports, but the facts are unclear and nothing has been confirmed”?

Romenesko today has tons more.

Greg Mitchell’s column in Editor & Publisher: “A local professor, who was at the scene, describes what he saw and felt as minutes, then hours, passed and the media got the story so very wrong. At the heart of the problem: officials and reporters alike were not willing to admit uncertainty.”

I’ve contacted the Inter-Mountain newspaper to get more information, and I will let you know what happens.

Connie Schultz, columnist for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer:

I have more sympathy than some for the print journalists who reported that the miners had survived. They all work for newspapers where the editors have one eye turned to TV all day long. I don’t envy any newspaper reporter who tried to convince editors back home that just because TV had it doesn’t mean it was right. Too often, that battle is lost the moment some newscaster proudly crows, “We have just learned…”

Broadcasting & Cable Magazine on the selling of Anderson Cooper as the face of CNN:

In another print ad, a concerned-looking Cooper is alone in a control room during Hurricane Katrina, holding a soda can. The text there is a quote from him: “Accountability is key. Find the facts. Find the truth. Present that to the audience.” In yet another, he is sitting on a curb in Beirut, taking notes in a reporter’s notebook; the text quotes the promise he made in the two-hour debut of 360 on Nov. 7 to “hold the people in power accountable for their words and their actions.”

Posted by Jay Rosen at January 9, 2006 11:14 AM Print

Well, Ok -- but there are a couple of problems with your calculations - and there is a reason I went with straight numbers of injuries rather than fatalities, and there's a reason I didn't sit around and try to torture the data in some way that would make the numbers more murky, because that's all you've done.

First, a massive shutdown after an accident would artificially depress working hours, without necessarily substantially improving safety. Worse yet, making decisions on such a metric would provide a perverse incentive for the mining industry to respond to fatal accidents by INCREASING working hours.

Second, I used injuries rather than fatalities because the fatality sample size is too small. With workers sometimes killed in groups of five to a dozen, a narrow stroke of good or bad fortune can radically alter the fatality numbers either way - indeed, in your numbers, using fatalities as the numerator, we would expect to see a couple of bizaare outliers. And indeed, we do - outliers which are right now unexplained.

Third, improvements in automation and technology would also artificially reduce the number of hours worked by a higher proportion than the number of injuries reduced. If we assess mine safety practices by your fatalities/hours worked metric, then the mining industry has a perverse incentive NOT to make automation or technological improvements that would reduce the total number of injuries.

If you're going to divide by anything, I think the thing to divide by would be production. But even that wouldn't be a consistent indicator except within one kind of mining - coal production isn't the same as gravel production, for instance. And even then, you reward those who react to a fatal accident by increasing production, rather than shutting things down for a short while.

At any rate, crunching the numbers like you do still suggests a marked improvement under the Bush Administration compared to Clinton. The 2001 outlier is the first year of the Bush Administration. The new policies would not be taking full effect until the new fiscal year started in October 2002, and any accidents borne of any laxity in enforcement would not be showing up until sometime after that. Stupidity has a latency period.

So no - I reject your data mining on statistical grounds. I would hold that absent a massive production slowdown, the best way to measure the safety record of the mine industry at large is to measure the number of injuries.

At any rate, the story I cited doesn't even do that. It doesn't bother to examine the most relevant numbers in ANY way whatsoever. And the paper's failure to do that reflects laziness and/or ineptitude on the part of the reporters no matter which way the numbers trend, and there's no way around that.

So did I soil myself by coming up with the injury numbers?

Not hardly. I'll stick by the raw number of injuries figures, thanks.

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 10, 2006 9:53 AM | Permalink

Another good but disturbing piece, Jay.
I linked to your earlier piece and I'll probably link to this one too from my piece this week about miners, Bill Bennett, and O'Reilly.

Posted by: Scott Butki at January 9, 2006 11:38 AM | Permalink

As I did at the other thread, I would ask anyone interested to read E&P's detailed breakdown of the "sourcing," and then comment. It has been updated since first appearing on Friday. Thanks.

Here is the link.

Posted by: Greg Mitchell at January 9, 2006 11:44 AM | Permalink

Number of injuries in combined coal/metal/nonmetal mining industries, nationwide

1931: 94,221 (disabling injuries only)
1992: 25,444 (all injuries)

2000: 16,209
2001: 14,748
2002: 13,413
2003: 12,050
2004: 12,105
2005: Not yet available.

Source: National Mining Association.

Under the Bush Administration, then, not only has the number of total mining fatalities from 85 in 2000 down to 57 in 2005, but has also cut the number of total mining injuries by 25 percent.

And so what's the headline from the knuckleheads at Knight-Ridder and the San Francisco Chronicle?

"Enforcement of Mine Safety Seen Slipping Under Bush."

How Knight Ridder can let an article on mine safety go without, you know, mentioning and quantifying publicly available data on MINE SAFETY is beyond me.

Somehow the number of unpaid fines is more relevant than the number of injuries prevented? (Smart regulators focus on follow-through on identified gigs - not on running a collections agency.)

However, the story line taken reinforces the popular journo meme - if the Bush Administration can be tarred and feathered, let's run with it, and damn the facts.

To paraphrase Jesse Jackson, if the Bush Administration walked on water tomorrow, Wednesday's headlines would read "Bush Officials Can't Swim."

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 9, 2006 11:48 AM | Permalink

ON THE STORY:

JARVIS: I'm not sure it's a problem. I think it's a new opportunity we have to figure out. We do now have news all the time. We have ubiquitous coverage of news. I think what has to happen is we have to understand that the public now has to act as an editor. They have to be as suspicious as we as reporters always were. But we had hours before the show came on or the edition came out. Now, news is constant. The flow of information is constant. And the public has to learn how to judge news the way editors do. The truth is, I think the public has always done that. [emphasis added]

Posted by: Sisyphus at January 9, 2006 12:00 PM | Permalink

I have a serious problem with Greg's latest piece, in which he writes:

In other words, the sources (including bells ringing out and people who had no direct information on the rescue, including the governor) in retrospect were shaky and the reporters should have done more reporting, but we did everything right because it was all based on what "people were saying." This sounds like Judy Miller's defense of her Iraq WMD reporting.

The last line tells you all you need to know about the flaws in the criticism of the coverage. If Mitchell really thinks that a comparison between mistakes made in the reporting of "breaking news" and those made in "investigative journalism" is in any way appropriate, he really has asbout as much business being a paid media critic as I do... probably even less than me, since I do know the difference between "breaking news" and "investigative reporting."

Mitchell and the rest of the press bashers on this story want to view this whole thing as "black and white" -- when its really all about shades of gray.

One gets the impression that Mitchell thinks that the proper approach to the story should have been:

"The local yokels have heard some rumor that the miners have been found alive. The church bells have been ringing, the governor gave us the thumbs up, and everyone is celebrating. But we're going to ignore all of that, because the PR department of the mining company hasn't given us a hand-out giving us their spin on the rescue efforts."

Posted by: ami at January 9, 2006 12:22 PM | Permalink

Jay:

Brynaert (who would never claim to be objective) is always correcting people who have their facts wrong, including me. That's because he cares more about getting it right than who's side gets hurt. You can't teach that, it is rare to find it, it's worth everything. Way to go, Ron.

Now, how, in all honesty, can you concede that newsrooms are overwhelmingly liberal/Democratic, that conservatives/Republicans are conversely underrepresented in newsrooms, as you do above ... and then state that it is "rare to find" someone who cares more about getting it right than about whose side is getting hurt, and still claim that the leftward demographic skew doesn't make its way into print?

If it's so rare to find, how is that even logically or statistically possible?

Jason

(Reposted because the prior thread was closed before you had a chance to respond)

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 9, 2006 12:29 PM | Permalink

Newspaper should have verified whether student was telling truth

While the editor of The Standard-Times on Dec. 30 admitted that the paper was to blame for running the original story without adequate evidence on Dec. 17, the paper continues to insist that its sources were reliable.

Hel-lo? Press Think?

Posted by: Sisyphus at January 9, 2006 12:35 PM | Permalink

Jason: I meant in that comment "rare in the political blogosphere," of which Ron--and you--are a part. You seem to think I see the traditional press as unbiased. I don't. I just don't buy your description of what the bias is.

I guess you didn't like my question: what sort of bias should the press have? Not surprised. Almost no one does. Takes away the high horse.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 9, 2006 12:39 PM | Permalink

Tim, I'm not sure I follow. Do you see the story of the kid who made up a story about being visited by Homeland Security as an equivalent to the mining diaster story?

How is this Press Think?

First, it wasn't a breaking story. Second, there wasn't a daily deadline issue. And, as in the link you gave,

The key is in the link you cited:

The reporter was unable to talk with the student, since the student did not want to be identified. The reporter was also unable to find other corroborating evidence.

If all the reporter had was the word of two college professor that the kid told them about the visit, there was no story. Of course it should have been further reported.

Also in your link: when other media called about the story and the faculty said they couldn't vouch for the truth of the story, the media interested died on the vine. No story.

The Visit story isn't a case of the convergence of circumstances but poor decision making on the part of the reporter and editor at the Standard-Times.

Where does this fit into the narrative of the current discussion?

Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 9, 2006 1:09 PM | Permalink

Appreciate CNN reporter Randi Kaye's awesome powers of self-reflection. (She was there.)

I was listening to CNN's live programming through my earpiece, waiting to appear on camera, when I heard a woman speak to Anderson Cooper live on the air.
My jaw dropped in the darkness as I listened to her tell him what mining company officials had announced at the church: Despite early word that 12 miners had survived, only one was alive. The other 11 were dead. There had been a "miscommunication," and the mining company waited three hours to tell the families the bad news.

Before I could stop them, the words "Oh no!" came out of my mouth. A newspaper reporter next to me said "What is it?" I told him it appeared only one miner was alive. In my ear, my producer in New York, Charlie Moore, was shouting "Randi, get confirmation. Get someone at the church to tell you this is true."

"Randi, get confirmation." I just love that. They're running with an uncomfirmed story for three hours, and they don't report how curious that is, but then it's, "Randi, quick, get confirmation!"

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 9, 2006 1:30 PM | Permalink

Grrrr. I fixed that. It's Becky. But thanks, Jenny.

Tim: The Little Red Book story is just too stupid to comment on. The Standard-Times didn't even come close to doing their job. I find it hard to get worked up about, though.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 9, 2006 1:54 PM | Permalink

This from Connie Schultz in the After Matters section above caught my attention: "They (print reporters) all work for newspapers where the editors have one eye turned to TV all day long."

On what planet would newspapers trump TV for immediacy? Certainly not on planet Earth. Newspapers have hurt themselves by attempting to compete with TV, and they always come up short. Print and TV are two different mediums---why are newspapers trying to be the same as TV when TV will always win? Newspapers have their place, but it is for in depth and accurate second day reporting, not the emotion of the moment----that would be TV's bailiwick.

Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 9, 2006 1:59 PM | Permalink

My purpose for linking to the Standard-Times story was not equivalency, or adequacy, or stupidity (well, OK, maybe my stupidity) ...

My reasoning was sourcing/"authorized knower" and accountability.

Different things that occur at different stages of manufacturing the news, whether compressed or extended in time.

Posted by: Sisyphus at January 9, 2006 2:08 PM | Permalink

Jay. The Little Red Book story was, indeed, stupid. However, it's possible that it might have run longer, misinformed more people--who would not be reached by the correction, if the paper were ethical enough to bother--except for luck.

If you will admit this is not the only boner the press commits, you will be facing the question of the cumulative effect on the news-consuming public.

Although major explosions take up a lot of time and energy, the lack of a major explosion over this means it's a "garden-variety error" which you admit the press will keep making and not be too concerned about.

And, by not reaching the maximum number of journalists with the blast and shrapnel of a major explosion, a teachable moment is passed. It isn't the subject, it isn't the kid in the story, it's the abject failure of basic reporting. There's no indication that the journos in question would come all over professional and competent if the subject were important, is there?

If Skidmore's skeleton crew could hang out where the information was, surely the bigs could have found one of their crew to do the same while the rest were getting ready to jump into the pool of emotion at the church with the Big Names of the networks.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 9, 2006 2:08 PM | Permalink

Jay

what sort of bias should the press have?

Demographically, none. The press newsroom political demographics should roughly mirror the political demographics of the country, the same way an index mutual fund mirrors the theoretical contents of an index.

Unfortunately, by loading most of our national media into a 10 square block area of mid-town Manhattan, you wind up with the biases of the NYC area - which are vastly different from the tendencies of the nation at large.

And by putting so many of its eggs in the midtown Manhattan basket, the national media has basically done the same thing bad fund managers did when they all loaded up on the same 40 Nasdaq stocks in 1999:

All the market bears listened to each other. They uncoupled their analysis from reality. Their biased analysis could not be supported by actual earnings. And they drove their shareholders off a cliff.

Had stock market assets more closely correlated with earnings, you wouldn't have had the same madness. (Stocks of profitable companies actually LOST 2% in 1999!)

Putting everything in midtown manhattan was a stupid idea.We'd be better off with a Chicago, or even Florida-based media. Somewhere where you might even find Red counties with red outlooks within commuting distance of media centers.

But the demographic skew isn't something that can't be addressed by the media. They went through great pains to address racial skewness not long ago. It's not a systemic bias in a finite hiring universe that cannot be statistically hedged in a meaningful way. There's no reason why conservatives and liberals cannot be represented within 5 points of one another in the newsroom.

Other than people who - while inexplicably warm to affirmative action initiatives for everything else under the sun - deny that there's even a problem.

Well, it doesn't LOOK like a problem from the point of view of a cultural Upper West Sider. Of course it doesn't. It's cultural UWSers who run the news. And, God love ya, you actually think you're normal!

Hell, you probably even think you don't speak with an accent.

Posted by: jwvansteenwyk@hotmail.com at January 9, 2006 2:14 PM | Permalink

Jay,

Why in the world would print media be looking at TV to see what they should report? In the comments, the local paper was given the excuse of they did not have a deadline, so they had the time to get it right. The same principle works for the morning print media. Since you do have a deadline, unlike cable news and the AP, you have to cover youself in case you are wrong.

The reporting was fine, the jumping to conclusions on unreliable information was the problem. The different kinds of media require different attitudes to information speed, cost, and reliability.

Posted by: Tim at January 9, 2006 2:21 PM | Permalink

The comments of jwvansteenwyk@hotmail.com makes me harken back to my youth when there were only 3 networks and all 3 followed the NYTimes lead.

Back then, I didn't have a clue that "the press is too liberal", I just thought the press was too New Yorkish, since what the networks were reporting didn't match the facts on the ground where I lived.

In other words, I thought then the national news was provincial. Sometimes, I think that now.

Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 9, 2006 2:46 PM | Permalink

E-mail from Felicity Barringer, New York Times:

Jay: You are critical of journalists in West Virginia for not being rigorous about confirming the initial report that the miners were alive. I'm not sure you mentioned that the report originated with relay communications from inside the mine and was delivered to the jam-packed command center by squawk box. Have you reported on Mr. Hatfield's description of how the erroneous report was widely disseminated by people in the command center who had heard it from rescuers within the mine?
I was in West Virginia, where cell phone and Internet connections are haphazard, when you first posted, and I had a few other things to do. So tell me: Have you mentioned the company's official explanation? It seems relevant, doesn't it?

I'm also curious about the hypothetical formulation that you recently put in the mouth of the CNN executive, which is written as if incorporating widely-known "facts." You write: "It is unacceptable to me that for three hours of live television, with our top talent presiding, we've got twelve men alive reported as truth, and we never saw those men, no ambulances for them ever moved, and we had no real confirmation. Just a bunch of people saying: yeah, that's what we heard."

FYI: a stream of ambulances arrived at the mine as the reports of the "miracle" began circulating. They briefly blocked the road from the mine office to the Sago church, forcing at least one journalist to run between the two venues in search of information.

Since you've had several days to find out whether ambulances were, in fact, dispatched, I'm sure you regret the inaccurate impression left by your column. And I'm confident you will correct it as visibly as you disseminated it, and explain where you got, and how you confirmed, the information that you give the color of fact. As I recall, standards for those reporting on the press are at least as high as those to which you hold other journalists.

Regards,

Felicity Barringer

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 9, 2006 3:23 PM | Permalink

The reporter was a freelancer with CSM, and their spokesperson says that "we have been advised that the less said, the better."

Gee, ya think? When has MSM shown such sensitivity toward other "freedom fighter" captives? Don't they normally air the terrorist propaganda video of the victim and the "freedom fighters"? I guess journalists are "special".

Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 9, 2006 4:01 PM | Permalink

I'll buy part of that.
I hated my five years in midtown. But it wasn't because it was an echo chamber; it wasn't. In truth, most of us spent most of our time disagreeing with each other all day long.
The rest of the time we spent fighting our way through tourists from Ohio, trying to get to the subway. (My wife, sentenced to a punishment of enduring life at the New York Times, still does this, every evening.)

The Sixth Avenue media ghetto isn't as homogenous as you think it is, Jason -- just as the self-enclosed claustrophobic bubble that we call the Pentagon isn't the homogenous hive of Robot-like militarist types that most conspiracy-minded liberals think that it is.
Truth is, both places are occupied by people from all over the country, who fight tooth and nail all day long.
And that's a good thing.
As for the fund managers that you cite -- God help 'em. There is no defense for their idiocy. (Now that would be a thread worth visiting.)

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 9, 2006 4:07 PM | Permalink

Yep. After all, they were so guarded about safeguarding the identities of Nick Berg, Kenneth Bigley, Paul Johnson, Kim Sun Il, and Margaret Hassan. I mean, you'd never know they were ever taken!

By the way, Abigail - it's not "freedom fighters." One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, so they say.

Didn't you get the memo?

The operative term is "rebel."

You know, like George Washington, Robert E. Lee, and Luke Skywalker.

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 9, 2006 4:13 PM | Permalink

Steve

Sorry, Steve. Arguing about whether to vote for Kerry or Dean in the Democratic primary doesn't score a lot of diversity points with most of us.

Sorry about those clueless tourists from Ohio clogging up the subways. I know how you feel, since the rest of the country spends so much time tripping over those inbred lefties from New York who clutter up the news copy.

Haven't you figured out yet that New York's population is not representative of the rest of the country? Even the population of people who move to New York to take media jobs is not representative of the rest of the country, because that population is taken from the small subset of people who are willing to move to New York.

Now, not too many people who commute to midtown every day on a reporer's salary is going to be inclined to keep his or her personal vehicle very long.

So right out of the gate, you rule out everyone who's upside down with a hefty monthly payment on a pickup truck.

Now if that doesn't statistically rule out the heart of Red America demographic, I don't know what does!

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 9, 2006 4:23 PM | Permalink

darn...got to the last thread a little too late - but since Jason mentioned me I'll continue also - thanks, Jay, for what you wrote about my Raw Story article on Bill Roggio. But, after a year's attendance at Press Think, I've learned more than my share of lessons here (from you, as well as from most of the commenters...even a few of the anonymous "trolls" that have now been designated outlaws)

ami (re:last thread),
I love what you wrote, too (though, personally, I do think it was wrong to include Roggio in that particular article mixed with the Iraqi media scandal...context is everything...while Roggio's fair game for a story about what some may perceive as propaganda it should have been on it's own with better research) because I wanted to make the article so that no matter how you felt you could decide for yourself where you stood.

But...remember...I contacted WaPo about Roggio..so it wasn't just an assault from the right that Howell might be responding to in a future column.

Posted by: Ron Brynaert at January 9, 2006 4:33 PM | Permalink

Gee, Abigal, gee, Jason -- you must be holding your breath.
Maybe Jill Carroll will be killed, like that ratfink Danny Pearl !
How cool would that be !!
It would certainly teach the Christian Science Monitor, which is doing everything that it can to get her out alive, wouldn't it ?
And, for sure, it would teach all those editors at other newspapers, foolishly withholding the name of a hostage in the hands of murderers, wouldn't it ?
Let's hope, huh ?!!!?
How low can you sink ?
How low ?

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 9, 2006 4:39 PM | Permalink

I'll confess, Jason, I don't have a pickup truck. But I do have a 1987 Jeep Cherokee, with rusted-out wheelwells. Does that meet your qualification for who's allowed to comment on press performance ?
I sure hope so, because I really need this gig.
Meantime, let's get back to the subject that dwarfs this bullshit about pickup trucks -- will Jill Carroll live, and should her employer be trying to save her life ?
Or should we, like Abigail, just yuck it up over her dilemma ?

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 9, 2006 4:53 PM | Permalink

Steve. As usual, you seem to think we can only know what you tell us, despite the evidence of our lying eyes.

To make the case once again, Abigail is yukking it up, if she is, over the notable lack of interest in the security of the other unfortunate folks who got taken.

Clearly, that doesn't do you much good so, as a good journalist, you misrepresent her position.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 9, 2006 4:57 PM | Permalink

Well, Richard, it shouldn't take long to find out.
It didn't with Danny Pearl, and it didn't with Richard Berg.
My only request is that Abigail, and Jason, and you, hold off with the toasts until the actual event occurs.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 9, 2006 5:09 PM | Permalink

Fine, Richard, what would you say if someone 'yukked it up' when a Brown & Root employee got kidnapped by Iraqi thugs because 'they were only there to make money'? Or simply used the capture of of anyone in Iraq solely for a paltry political point?

Is it your position - or Abigail's or Jason's - that the news media should ignore the kidnappings? Not raise any attention or interest in the abductions by homicidal ideologues?

Or it is simply Ha, Ha, the press got theirs?

I'm serious. I don't understand why abigail and jason saw fit to take the conversation down this dreary little path.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 9, 2006 5:13 PM | Permalink

Good lord Lovelady, get a grip. Show me the quote where I wish Jill Carroll will be killed. I don't want anyone to be killed by the insurgents/terrorists/freedom fighters.

My point is that the press handles journalist kidnappings differently from "civilian" kidnappings.

Can you at least accept that I don't want ANYBODY killed, no matter their occupation or politics? Jeez!

Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 9, 2006 5:14 PM | Permalink

It's cultural UWSers who run the news. And, God love ya, you actually think you're normal!

When did I ever boast about being "normal?" When...? :)

If you think people in Manhattan go around thinking, "down deep, we're pretty much like the rest of America..." you don't know many who live in Manhattan. I doubt they would say they're a representative lot.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 9, 2006 5:26 PM | Permalink

Can you at least accept that I don't want ANYBODY killed, no matter their occupation or politics?
Posted by: Abigail Beecher

Since you ask, Abigail, no.
Your glee at Jill Carroll's abduction is apparent. And your words speak for themselves.
Live with them. Google certainly will.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 9, 2006 5:28 PM | Permalink

Steve,

Your prediliction for kneejerk hysteria has caused you, again, to miss the point: If it is a good idea for the media to keep quiet about the CSM reporter's disappearance, then why wasn't it also appropriate for them to keep mum about everyone else's?

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 9, 2006 5:32 PM | Permalink

Since you’ve had several days to find out whether ambulances were, in fact, dispatched, I’m sure you regret the inaccurate impression left by your column. And I’m confident you will correct it as visibly as you disseminated it, and explain where you got, and how you confirmed, the information that you give the color of fact.

Jay, I do hope that you will explain to this woman that when you wrote:

and we never saw those men, no ambulances for them ever moved,

that your readers understood that you were referring to the twelve ambulances that had been dispatched to the scene....and which (save one) never moved for three hours after showing up there...which, of course, is what one would expect them to do if the miners had been found alive....

Posted by: ami at January 9, 2006 5:44 PM | Permalink

Do we know for a fact that the media overrode requests to not report in other kidnappings? Or is this just more 'everyone knows how rotten the media are"?

The E&P link clearly states Post and LA Times editors saying they are always willing to forestall publication of a kidnappee's name if asked.

Anyone know otherwise?

Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 9, 2006 5:45 PM | Permalink

Steve, can you come back to the 6th avenue ghetto? Having worked in media in NYC and environs, and now living in the Midwest, I have to agree that the NY media scene is an echo chamber. Things looks mighty different out here in the heartland. Commuting to the train station in your Jeep may seem outrageous in Westchester (or wherever) but no one out here commutes to train stations.

It's subtle, but really noticeable when I read the NYT. Or watch network news. There is a sense of "we're in the big city and we're telling you about yourselves" that permeates broadcasts out of NYC. Election results are worst, as though our states are chess pieces in some great East Coast matchup.

I wish I could more eloquently explain this. But I believe it, and I see it now. I really didn't see it until I left the coast.

You know the saying, that the fish can't see the water because he's living in it....

Posted by: JennyD at January 9, 2006 5:48 PM | Permalink

Upon further reflection, I think my post that said you don't think you have an accent is an inaccurate analogy. The correct analogy would be to say, yes you know intellectually that you speak with an accent. But when you hear other people speak like you do, you don't hear it, and you don't bother examining it, and the rational thing to do with accents is to shrug it off and say "so what?"

Public policy decisions don't ride on accents. They do, however, ride on newsmedia coverage - as do elections. And Manhattan produces news with a decided regional skew. I mean, look at the exhaustive national coverage of the NYC transit strike. Think I care? Will we see the same coverage of a bus strike in Fort Lauderdale, where I live?

It's important. But for a local paper. I'd expect the Times to cover it in its non national edition. I'd expect the Post to cover it. Don't particularly need to see it on CNN, since it crowds out real news, like Iraq news.

But since everyone at CNN headquarters and Fox News Headquarters and ABC and CBS and NBC was talking about it over the water cooler, because they had a hard time getting to work that day, it occupied a much bigger time slot footprint than it should have in national outlets.

That's a decided skew. It wasn't done in bad faith. It wasn't done as part of some nefarious plan to obscure coverage of the Iraqi elections.

But it's skew all the same. It's the Manhattan regional accent seeping through. And although you can't see it if you live and work in NYC for years, it's pretty obvious to the rest of the country. Indeed, it's glaring.

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 9, 2006 5:49 PM | Permalink

Show me the "glee", Lovelady
Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 9, 2006 05:34 PM

I don't think anyone will have any trouble finding the glee, Beecher, including Carroll's survivors, if it comes to that.
It came at 4:01 this afternoon.

MAJOR OT ALERT: E&P today acknowledges what many of us have known for a while: a US reporter has been grabbed by "freedom fighters", oops, I mean terrorists. But there is a news blackout to protect her safety.
The reporter was a freelancer with CSM, and their spokesperson says that "we have been advised that the less said, the better."
Gee, ya think? When has MSM shown such sensitivity toward other "freedom fighter" captives? Don't they normally air the terrorist propaganda video of the victim and the "freedom fighters"? I guess journalists are "special".
Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 9, 2006 04:01 PM

Gee, ya think ??

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 9, 2006 5:57 PM | Permalink

I'm not sure whether it's the Manhattan regionalism or simply the Center of the Known World Syndrome, but I can actually agree with - to a degree - with Jason. Not a sentence you'll see me write often.

I don't think it permeates all aspects of the reportage as he does. Some of the regional bureaus are peopled by folks who don't have a Manhattan state of mind. But but there is enough of that geocentric attitude to irritate.

The transit strike coverage is a good example. Why do I need to know that many people - including reporters! - had to walk to work?

Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 9, 2006 6:03 PM | Permalink

I'd like to ask all involved in the sarcastic discussion of Ms. Carrol's abduction to stop. I'm sure it's coming from high emotion and frustration on both sides, but it is beneath all of you as well as the situation.

I'm hoping with all of my heart and prayers that she is and will remain safe, as I know everyone here is, too.

Let's stay on the topic.

Posted by: kristen at January 9, 2006 6:57 PM | Permalink

Can we try to put this in perspective ?
I don't think the transit strike in NYC , or whom it inconvenienced, matters a whole hell of a lot right now to Jill Carroll, who , as far as we know, is trying her best to stay alive -- or to her editors, who are trying to keep her alive, or to her captors, whomever they are.
Or to all the editors who ever withheld publication of a kidnap victim's name if asked. (Which would include any editor I ever met.)
Anyone who thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy land.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 9, 2006 7:12 PM | Permalink

Well, judging by my wire, the AP reported Jill Carroll's kidnapping at 12:51 p.m. (that's pacific time -- add three hours, if you live in the center of the known media universe), and an L.A. Times story reporting it moved at 5:47 p.m.

So, when you talk about it not being reported ... what are you talking about?

Posted by: trostky at January 9, 2006 9:28 PM | Permalink

Geez, I remember when discussions of actual reporting techniques didn't automatically, inevitably mutate into discussions of how politically biased the media are.

But then I'm getting old.

Posted by: Lex at January 9, 2006 10:03 PM | Permalink

I'm not sure whether it's the Manhattan regionalism or simply the Center of the Known World Syndrome, but I can actually agree with - to a degree - with Jason. Not a sentence you'll see me write often.
I don't think it permeates all aspects of the reportage as he does.

I do not know many Manhattanites that are dying to visit Cleveland, OH, or Jackson MS., but on the other hand, Manhattan is teeming with the reverse flow! It is indeed the center of the known world:-) -- at least one of the centers.

If Ft. Lauderdale doesn't want to read New York City news, it should get its own national newspaper and perhaps show the NYT a thing or two about reporting. This is a free country and many good newspapermen are looking for jobs.

In fact, I would even say, the solution to much of this angst is to get your own RED country!

Posted by: Phileas Fogg at January 9, 2006 10:05 PM | Permalink

come on people, get a grip!

we're talking about rumors at midnight that was corrected at 3 a.m.

now if the rumors were at 6 p.m., and corrected at 9 p.m. and all the papers had the wrong stories, then we have something to argue about.

this news was corrected the next day. this is not Judy Miller or even Jayson Blair where the erroneous info was not corrected until much later if at all.

what is the fuss?

Why is it bad for the media to be concentrated in mid-town Manhattan? So should we not trust/appreciate investment bankers, advertisers, publishers, actors, designers, musicians, playwrights, novelists and writers because they are all too New York centric?

Posted by: bush's jaw at January 9, 2006 10:51 PM | Permalink

I was raised in downstate Illinois and went to grad school in upstate New York (a migration that geographically parallels Mark Twain's in some respects). That allows me to testify to a childhood spent under the thumb of the East Coast establishment as I was taught by Buchanon/Agnew/Nixon and my parents. I daily experienced radical discrepancies between midwestern Republican-defined reality and mainstream news (in fact, I never saw a real life copy of the New York Times until I got to college, but I already knew it was liberal).

When I got to Cornell, there was culture shock of two kinds. First, New Yorkers and New York staters WERE provinicial, just like everybody else and they were not very good about seeing or admitting it. For years, their province was the standard of measurement.

Second, Republican fantasies of persecution by coastal elites that had some merit in the days of Lyndon Johnson, William Buckley, and Democratic congressional majorities became an embarassing parody of themselves as Republicans took control of all branches of government for decades on end, turned the Congress and Washington D.C. into an organized crime gang with the K Street Project and took over talk radio and cable news. Through Drudge and the internet, RNC talking points became the frame for national "reality" and produced interminable congressional investigations regardless of their ability to produce real world data that remotely resembled their groundless accusations (as opposed to the vacation Congress has been on for five years now outside of cracking down on steroid use in baseball. Where would we be without Republican congressional majorities spending weeks on national policy challenges of this magnitude?). The clearest product of this transformation was the terrorized journalist and media executive suffering from Stockholm (Rove) Syndrome. Major networks and newspapers hired ombudsmen and women with the apparent job description of legitimizing factually baseless RNC disinformation and doing penance for politically incorrect coverage as defined by Republican dogma rather than factual data.

Bottom Line: Greater Republican control meant EVEN GREATER Republican "victimization."

Republican, heal thyself.

Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 9, 2006 10:55 PM | Permalink

By the way, USA Today, which is the No. 1 or No. 2 newspaper these days, in terms of circulation, is based in ... where? ... Orlando, Fla. CNN is based in beautiful downtown Atlanta, Ga. The Tribune Co. is based in the Windy City and also owns the newspaper of record in Los Angeles. The fine national reporting staff of Knight Ridder is based ... I don't know where, but it ain't New York City. The Washington Post is apparently a newspaper of some prominence and influence.

New York? What do they publish there?

Posted by: trostky at January 9, 2006 11:36 PM | Permalink

And now, (drum roll, please!) for the winner:

the Inter-Mountain newspaper of Elkins, W.Va.

Jay's students are making a beeline for their internships in W.Va. with the Columbia grads not far behind!

Posted by: village idiot at January 9, 2006 11:58 PM | Permalink

I have to say, my personal experience tells me that USA Today, with its focus groups and whatever other means it uses, HAS avoided MANY of the provincial east coast blind spots that used to irritate the hell out of me in the midwest.

Why so many people imagine cultural and moral resentment of the provinces bears the remotest relation to the Republican party's pseudo-populist "Welfare for Corporations, Not People!" policies, however, remains a mystery that command of midwest culture has not helped clarify.

Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 10, 2006 1:32 AM | Permalink

come on people, get a grip!
we're talking about rumors at midnight that was corrected at 3 a.m.

now if the rumors were at 6 p.m., and corrected at 9 p.m. and all the papers had the wrong stories, then we have something to argue about.

News flash: The whole world doesn't live in the East Coast time zone.

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 10, 2006 1:36 AM | Permalink

We did. You might not have noticed. It's called America. :-)

Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 10, 2006 1:42 AM | Permalink

New York and L.A. were very much the center of film and TV culture for many decades. That changed quite drastically with cable and talk radio (remember Paul Harvey?) even before the internet wave hit.

Of course, we can't forget Detroit's Father Coughlin on the Columbia Broadcasting Network. Those were the good old days.

The South's gonna do it again (and the Midwest is coming along for the ride)!

Actually, if you count electoral votes, since Reagan the correct tense is,"The South's doin' it again!"

Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 10, 2006 1:54 AM | Permalink

I heard the CNN tape of 'caller', and frankly, I thought it was a lie at the time.

There was something in the manner the caller said 'yeah, it was twelve' as if someone off-mic was coaching.

Lies or incompetence, it was a shameful business.
I hope the media do a better job of investigating and reporting on the reason those men died; and I don't mean 'because they ran out of air in an unavoidable mine explosion.'

Posted by: Jon Koppenhoefer at January 10, 2006 4:47 AM | Permalink

Jason Van Steenwyk has been trying to "correct" the lazy "liberal" media's use of mining safety statistics in this thread and the last one. Unfortunately, Jason (like MSHA's summary webpage) only lists fatality and injury numbers ABSENT the working hours during which these fatalities and injuries took place.

In fact, working hours in coal mines have dropped forty percent since 1993, so fatalities would have to drop forty percent just to stay at the same safety rate per 200,000 working hours (the way MSHA reported fatality rates on their summaries until 1999. Draw your own conclusion). Jason's statistics radically misrepresent the FACTS.

If we calculate underground coal mining fatalities per 200,000 working hours they look like this:

The year 2000 was worse than 1999. Over the last twelve years, the most lethal year in underground coal mining was 2001. The next most lethal year was 1996.

From 1993 to 2005 per 200,000 working hours:

1993 .04780
1994 .04196
1995 .04868
1996 .06485
1997 .04162
1998 .04763
1999 .04051
2000 .04428
2001 .07660
2002 .03138
2003 .03495
2004 .03798
2005 .03136

Jason soils himself again:

So here's the REAL narrative: The numbers show pretty clearly that mine fatalities actually declined consistently and substantially after the Bush Administration took over federal mine enforcement. (The New York Times has soiled itself once again.)What's distressing - or OUGHT to be distressing - is that your own set of assumptions had blinded you to the possibility that the Bush Administration had actually been effective in reducing the number of mine fatalities.

All statistics are taken from
http://www.msha.gov/ACCINJ/ALLMINES.HTM
The statistics are not aggregated per 200,000 working hours so I had to make those calculations myself.

Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 10, 2006 7:45 AM | Permalink

Abigail: Do you have any links, quotes, any bit of evidence at all of the American press using the term "freedom fighters" to refer to the bad guys the US is fighting in Iraq? Has it been found in any news stories? (I hope you saved them, if so) How about one news story?

I really don't get your use of that term. What does it have to with journalism, with press think, with the behavior of correspondents abroad-- with anything?

Now I am aware (not from you, but from reading others) that because the U.S. press uses the term "insurgents" that signals as clearly as language can that the press is on the side of the Saddamists, Islamists and Al Queda forces in Iraq and would love to see them win, even if the same forces kidnap and kill their journalistic colleagues; and I know too that because Michael Yon uses the term "terrorist" instead of "insurgent" he is the Truthtelling Reporter Supreme and worth 50 "insurgent"-using John Burnses, and I accept the wisdom of all that, I do--it's in the end irrefutable-- but where does "freedom fighter" come from? What relevance does it have?

ami: I do hope that you will explain to this woman that you were referring to the twelve ambulances that had been dispatched to the scene...

I will, of course, but does anyone know what Felicity Berringer is so angry with PressThink about?

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 10, 2006 9:00 AM | Permalink

A couple of minor corrections to Trotsky's otherwise admirable post. (Welcome, Leon !)

USA Today is based in Reston, Virginia.
CNN is based in beautiful downtown Atlanta, Ga.
The Tribune Co. is based in the Chicago and also owns the newspaper of record in Los Angeles.
The fine national reporting staff of Knight Ridder work for a corporation based in San Jose, Calif.
The Wall Street Journal is based in New York City, but the great majority of its editors and reporters are scattered around the world.
There are media outlets who are New York-centric, of course ... although when that became a curse word, I'm not sure.
Chief among them would be Fox Corp, home of the delightful Bill O'Reilly and the moonbat New York Post.
And so it goes ...

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 10, 2006 9:03 AM | Permalink

I don't really care if the press has bias--who can honestly be non-biased? Biases are ingrained over the collective experience of our lives and shape our work, whatever that work is. We should actually embrace our biases and be honest about them with the people we communicate with, in addition to how they influence our work. What can be wrong with that?

I think the biggest problem is to pretend that one's own bias-influenced work is somehow unbiased (impossible in my opinion). In a sense, I think editors can be useful in adjusting for bias if the attempt is to balance a piece through additional quotes or sources, in addition to neutralization of qualifying language. In this sense, the end-product of reporting may in fact disguise the author's original bias. But the author cannot then claim to be unbiased.

Of course, bias will also be reflected in the whole process of journalistic work in ever decision made for a piece.

Posted by: Shawn in Tokyo at January 10, 2006 9:36 AM | Permalink

Received this note from Linda Skidmore of the Inter-Mountain newspaper in West Virgina, whom PressThink readers had asked me to contact to she if she would respond to this and the previous thread:

Jay:
I am considering your requests. There are a few points I would like to set straight.
Thanks
Linda

Meanwhile, here is a good first person reflection on the media circus at the Church by a Charleston, WV reporter, Scott Finn. It appears that Geraldo distinguished himself again.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 10, 2006 9:40 AM | Permalink

That's a good piece by Scott Finn. I particularly liked his final two graphs:

By the way, faithful reader, if you now agree with that woman that I am indeed a spy, I have one question for you.
What does that make you?

Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 10, 2006 9:50 AM | Permalink

From Kurtz:

I have tried to get the general press interested," says Ellen Smith, owner of the trade publication Mine Safety and Health News. "I just kind of gave up."
The mine agency has received scant coverage, even as it has changed -- critics say softened -- the Clinton administration's enforcement approach. Since 2001, according to a database search, The Post has published three staff-written stories on mine safety not related to a specific accident; the New York Times, two; Wall Street Journal, one; Chicago Tribune, one; and Los Angeles Times and USA Today, none. "60 Minutes" did one segment on a mine safety whistle-blower.

Perhaps the most persistent reporter has been Ken Ward of West Virginia's Charleston Gazette, who says that under the Bush administration, the mine safety agency "started clamping down on folks like me" and "people we dealt with all the time were all of a sudden instructed not to talk." Ward says the agency didn't tell the Gazette of a media conference call last week: "It's pretty amazing that a federal agency would hold a briefing on the biggest mining disaster in West Virginia in 40 years and exclude the biggest paper in the state."

Labor Department spokesman David James says the call was put together on the fly and there was no attempt to exclude the Gazette. He says Ward made an unfounded complaint after the department worked hard to get him answers amid the chaos Tuesday night.

No reporter bothered to check that night as they reported the miners were alive, which he would have explained was unconfirmed, James says. "We were working all night," he says. "Our phones did not ring one time."

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 10, 2006 10:04 AM | Permalink

In the interest of advancing lessons learned, I'm linking to a good column by Poynter's Scott Libin on what I call the "epistemology" of reporting: making sure we know that what we know is true, or determining how we know what we know.

In particular, some of the questions he says reporters should keep in mind also should be printed out, laminated and kept in wallet/purse.

Posted by: Lex at January 10, 2006 10:13 AM | Permalink

Sorry to return to the offtopic and the bias war -- but has anyone seen this today?

As linked to by Kurtz this morning, it appears to be a round table of top-shelf right wing bloggers, taking their marching orders from RNC chief Ken Mehlman (and asking some questions, too).

This isn't even bias. It's top-down propaganda dissemination.

Not blogs at their best.

Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 10, 2006 10:37 AM | Permalink

"It's pretty amazing that a federal agency would hold a briefing on the biggest mining disaster in West Virginia in 40 years and exclude the biggest paper in the state."
Labor Department spokesman David James says the call was put together on the fly and there was no attempt to exclude the Gazette.

Hmmm .... sounds pretty lame, I'd say.

Posted by: village idiot at January 10, 2006 10:50 AM | Permalink

Daniel. I don't know what it makes you. What it makes me is ill.

When I see a mike shoved into the face of someone struggling of emotion, I change the channel. When I encounter the equivalent in print, I skip it.

If the guys had survived, I'd be happy for them and their families. If not, I sure as hell don't want--nor need--this emotional glop. It's not my business, it's intrusive and vile. The bereaved should be left the hell alone. I want the story of what happened. How did it happen? What did the rescue crews do? How did they do it? And so forth.

When my kids were in high school, there was a horrible traffic accident the week of the prom which killed three seniors. During the prom, the local stations tried to crash it to get "the story", the bastards. Parents, warned that this might happen, had hired security, which kept the parents from assaulting the reporters. Not what had been expected, but the boys retreated hastily. And a station which was using a long-range camera from across the street had to deal with a van the security guys had brought which kept getting in the sight line.

So, anyway, was somebody inquiring about my attitude to the media...? Somebody was, I think. Maybe not.

But how many are there who think as I do? You journos probably don't think about that, but you ought to.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 10, 2006 11:00 AM | Permalink