Greg Mitchell even gives us a timeline of the AP's mistakes -- everyone's mistakes. Real easy to do from his comfortable New York office.
There'll be a lot of blame to pass around for this one and the media will rightfully share in it. But to those of you watching and reading at home, on those really high horses, just remember -- you weren't there. You don't know what it was like and how everyone had to report what was happening and what the families were saying.
It was a breaking story and as had been the case, updates from Ben Hatfield ICG were few and far between. What would you all have said if CNN had ignored the families and waited for 3 1/2 hours to say anything?
Thes a lesson to be learned here, and it's not for the media, but for the public. You're getting a very first-hand look at what we go through in breaking news situations. The trouble to report and confirm and keep up is difficult and it played out in full detail on national TV last night.
But the press is usually a whipping-boy no matter what, and I doubt anyone watching will take away anything from this lesson. Instead, as E&P showed, they'll sit back and criticize as if they could do it better.
Now I'm just waiting for CJR's wise words of wisdom.
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Well Justin, I certainly feel for you since you are so close to the situation. I have done a LOT of interviews and from the brief glimpses of the news cycle I have seen ... it is vicious. I can't imagine the grief, even from the objective reporter's position, you must be feeling
... to much so and maybe this will lead to some sort of change...maybe.
At the same time, like you, I think it is appropriate for people to review the events and what led to what. Even so I hope the media will not stew in navel gazing and the public won't lose the true focus of the story.
These families are forever changed and grieving. It does not serve the public interest to lose that as the primary focus.
I know you know how hard it is to listen to criticism from people who don't have a clue. It gets old real fast.
Now I have to go and write a column about it all. I just to sleep. soon.
Justin,
First-time visitor to your blog and I'm glad to have found it.
What would the media's critics have said if it ignored all of the celebration for three hours? Before the truth came, the media's critics would have already been demanding answers about why the media was "sleeping" through the story of the family's celebration.
There was no way to win here.
I've recently read a scathing review of the media that calls their "disinformation" the "greatest disaster of all." The greatest disaster of all, in this story, is that lives were lost, period. But then that there are people who are trying to elevate three hours of UNINTENTIONAL false reporting as a greater tragedy than the loss of those men speaks volumes about how eager some are to vilify the media no matter what.
Certainly, the media shouldn't have dropped its attritubution, which turned the story from "Source says miners are safe" into "Miners are safe." But at the same time, when the media is confronted by the governor, the state's highest OFFICIAL, who also delivers the "confirmation" that the miners are alive, how much more "official" word should the media have believed at that particular moment? (And I saw the governor riding by cameras saying something to the effect of "We got our miracles" when he believed the men were alive.) How is the media supposed to IGNORE that?
I've noted elsewhere that common sense betrayed the news crews on the scene: it would be common sense that the families would be notified first. It would also be common sense that the governor, who would have had access to the families as well as the rescue command center, would have correct information. Both turned out to be false in this situation.
Hindsight is 20/20. Even so, I'm pretty confident that most of the non-media professionals would have done the same thing given the atmosphere around them.
The common sense issue if very true. Throughout the ordeal, breifings went like this:
they went to the church to talk to the families, then they gathered us at the coal processing plant to tell the media, the rationale being they didn't want the families getting bad news from CNN before it came from the company.
And there were a lot of people on the ground trying to confirm it -- but the company didn't give us someone who was 24/7 responsible for media communication. The state didn't even have one. We were at their mercy, and they waited hours before correcting the wrong reports.