Please, don’t give the usual suspects any ideas.
- I believe he was being tongue in cheek
- Bashing the pres = not lobbing softballs
The governor of West Virginia confirmed that the 12 miners were alive; they were ringing church bells in celebration because the miners were alive; the information that the miners were alive came directly from the people who were running the rescue operation. The only way the story could have been better confirmed is if God, Himself, had come down and said, “Yes, these people are alive.” Frank, I like you, but, speaking as someone who’s been following the story from the beginning, you’re being a bit unreasonable here.
CJ
This is something that’s bothered me for a long time…and not just in these big, high-visibility tragedies. I call it “spectacle grieving.” Years ago, the death of a loved one was a private matter. You and close friends and family would work through it within the traditional constricts of your faith (or without faith, as we do in our family). You’d cry, lean on each other, accept casseroles from neighbors, and tend to the details of disposing of the body.
Today, everyone gets a roadside shrine, a candle light vigil, a multi-media retrospective, a website, and a t-shirt. When a tragedy such as the mining disaster happens, people from miles around show up to “out-grieve” each other. I realize an injustice has been done to the miners and the community in general, due to apparently unsafe working conditions. But people really should try to separate grief from political action. I just find it to be rather attention whore-like.
Great post, I totally agree.
My sympathy goes out to Mr. The Hedgehog and his family. Oh wait…that says “tragedy at Sego.” Never mind.
Ask and ye shall receive:
From this link:
Just putting the fox to guard the hen house. Business as usual…
Alas…
The media get a lot of pounding for being too quick to report bad news–too cynical, too gloomy, too eager for [fill in the blank] to fail. Here, for once, they were eager, in retrospect too eager, to report good news. A nice change, but can they catch a break for it? Nope.
damn that Molly Ivans is good. She wrote that in 2002, more than 3 years before y’all were looking for something like that.
Or didn’t you happen to notice the fucking copyright date in your haste to play partisan “gotcha”?
OK, y’all have made some good points, and I believe I was wrong in this instance. I still think, in general, that the media has a tendency to rush to proclamation before they have all the facts. It appears that that was not the case here. They rightfully thought that they did have all the facts.
I didn’t watch any of the coverage, but can somebody answer this – Did the media report “So and so is reporting that the miners are alive,” or did they say, “the miners are alive”? I’ve seen enough news to know they usually mention where news is coming from, “we are now getting word that…” and “according to…”
Which means they didn’t lie. They accurately reported the information they were given.
I did a media awareness course a while back and the lecturer said there are two things that will make people read a paper or watch a news bulletin: Conflict and Emotion. This kind of tragedy, with terrible deaths and the tragic miscommunication, delivered both in spades.
If any newspaper had waited to verify the facts or had been more circumspect in their reporting of them, my guess is that they would have been hugely outsold by the ones screaming: ALIVE!
They would have been more accurate, but unfortuately I don’t think that pure objective accuracy is the only goal in the media game nowdays.
So do I. I’m glad someone was honest enough to say it.
I saw coverage on MSNBC and Fox. The media initially got the story from the families, who suddenly began to celebrate and ring the church bells. For the firest hour or so, they were reporting that “the familes have been told” that there are “12 alive” etc. Part of the reporting was actually family members coming out and shouting that the miners were alive. I did see MSNBC running a crawl that they were awaiting confirmation from the rescue team but around the time the governor started throwing around the “M word,” I think they just started reporting it as fact that the miners were alive. They had no reason not to at that point.
I think it’s imortant to remember that the familes did not get any of their information from the media. The families were largely the source of the information. The media got it from them.
RE: the OP: I saw Fox News today poring over the details of some supposed “note” that had been left by one of the miners. They’re going to be fucking these corpses for a while yet, I think.
It’s not just Fox. The local television station read the contents of the note a few minutes ago and the local paper’s website has a picture of the note on it. (I’m not linking to it because that page is subject to change).
Frank, you were right about the news media in a lot of cases, especially what happened in New Orleans. It strikes me as ironic that I’ve got a coworker who bought the initial media reports hook, line, and sinker, and continued to believe them after they were refuted. When I mentioned they said they were wrong, he said “The truth will come out.” What’s now ironic is he’s from Tallmansville, WV.
CJ
If it has to be done to divert attention from mine safety, corporate culpability, and government complacency, I guess it has to be done.
:dubious: Your point? Ivins drew attention to Bush’s gradual abandonment of mine health and safety issues over three years ago. This wasn’t her playing Monday Morning Quarterback after this tragedy. Is it likely that the current administration’s policies have increased mine safety issues at the expense of the mine owners in these past three years?
Too bad that y’all weren’t there for the rescue effort instead of here; this is a place where it doesn’t pay to dig yourself deeper.
I agree. Molly is smart as a whip. The fact that she saw this coming just underlines the shortcomings of the administration and the fact that the mine dropped the ball.
Well, some would call that letting the fox guard the henhouse. But it seems to be that regulators ought to know the industry they are regulating.
With all that has been discussed here, you’d think mines would be getting more and more dangerous. However, it does not seem that hard evidence bears this out.
Black lung disease is down among the general population.
It is sharply down among coal miners themselves.
And mine fatalities are down in recent years as well.
Now, some small changes may need to be made. However, results indicate that the current regulatory scheme is working basically well.
I’ll highlight the part I assume you’re talking about:
Who should be in the “top positions” of the MSHA, exactly? People in the coal industry who have managerial experience running businesses and projects related to coal, or journalism majors? Would I be disqualified from serving at the MSHA because I’m a “coal industry (quasi)executive”? Is there evidence that these people were unqualified, had clear conflict of interest that prevented them from doing their jobs, or had criminal intent? Any evidence that Bush and his choices were responsible for this accident? Anyone even know exactly why this accident happened? (I know someone investigating the accident, actually, and the answer is, according to him as of this morning, no).
Molly Ivin’s throwaway line was, IMO, a subtle implication that an eeeeeeeeeeeeevil Republican junta has staffed the MSHA with greedy coal plutocrats. The same sort of thing we read in the op-ed pieces which cluck their tongues over “energy executives” being involved in, ironically, energy decisions. As I say again, who do you want staffing positions in administrations dealing with energy matters? People in the industry with experience? Before one answers “some professor somewhere”, think a bit about what the real relation is between academia and reality, especially when it comes to managing a technical administration and working with an industry. I’m sure there’s qualified people from many areas of the related fields, but where are most of them likely to be?
(And yes, I’ve met some really - profoundly - stupid “coal company executives”, as well as criminal ones. Just like I’ve met the same in many fields.)