A few months back, Bush was dragged across the coals because he had filled an important post with someone who hadn’t had nearly enough experience in that field.
You really can’t have things both ways. Either someone knows the industry or the field, in which case there may always be rumblings that they are insiders, or you bring in outsiders who might not know what the hell they are doing.
The anger the families feel is not directed at “the media”, who after all were not involved in the miscommunication at all. The company told them the wrong info.
Buit that’s not what they’re mad about, either – judging from what I’ve read, anyway. The thing they repeatedly mention is the three-hour delay…although, in the interest of strict accuracy, and judging only from the timeline given above, it was 2.5 hours from the company learning the info “might” be wrong, and 1 hour 22 minutes between the company confirming it and telling the families.
The company claims that the info was withheld while they tried to verify it, but that doesn’t really explain why NOTHING was said.
IMHO, the reason the families, and so many ordinmary citizens following the story, are angry, is that the most plausible reason for the company not coming forward is that they were covering their own asses. The stench of covered ass rises from this whole story.
I’m sure that some of you are angry at “the media” for various reasons, but this story doesn’t look to be a particularly good example of media bias or misreporting. It’s a pretty good tale of corporate risk-taking with the lives of the little guys, though. And it might turn into more.
Sailboat
How is it a tale of such? While don’t you spin it, if it is such a tale.
Keep in mind one big thing, though. Coal mining is an occupation with numerous attendant dangers - dangers inherent in the activity of extracting coal from a deep shaft. These dangers can be mitigated considerably, but it seems to be wishful thinking to believe that the industry can be made 100% safe.
Lots of industries risk the lives of the “little guys”. Truck driving can be dangerous, as can fishing for Alaskan king crab. My dad was working in a steel mill when a man died in a horrible industrial accident right in front of him.
As long as these risks are kept small, society will tolerate them, as it has long ago recognized that eliminating these risks is impossible.
A comparison of mining today versus condition in mines 30 or 50 years ago demonstrates clearly that risks in American coal mines have indeed been reduced to historically low levels, and it is a fair question whether further improvements can realistically be made. It may have reached the point where any fielded improvement will not lead to fewer people being killed.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t keep trying, just that we ought to be prepared for this possibility.
I’ve researched and written at-length under this name and published under my IRL name, and I feel we can expect the potential for mine accidents to increase slightly by 2025, based on two primary drivers:
A steady increase in the quantity of coal mined (even if the percentage of coal power production drops slightly), and
The re-emergence of Northern Appalachian and Illinois Basin coal mining efforts.
You see, since the CAA Amendments of 1990, there has been a dramatic and huge shift in coal production from the Appalachian and Interior Regions (generally, high sulfur coals), to the Wyoming PRB regions (low sulfur coals). Since the vast majority of the Wyoming mines are open-pit mines, they are somewhat more efficient at producing coal in terms of tons per miner-hour, and they are a bit safer by the inherent fact that it’s aboveground.
In the early 1990’s, utilities were faced with two main choices to reduce SO2 emissions: install SO2 scrubbers, or switch to lower sulfur coal. In the majority of the cases, they chose to switch to lower sulfur coal, mostly from Wyoming (but also the Central Appalachian region and South America, Indonesia, etc.)
However, the further tightening of emissions standards in the US (especially, in the case of planning for baghouse installation for mercury removal systems), a very large number of coal units are building or upgrading their scrubbers. About 50% of what I’m working on right now involves scrubber upgrades, in fact. If a plant upgrades, or more importantly installs a scrubber, this means that since they can remove so much in the way of SO2, they now can go back to buying Northern Appalachian and Illinois Basin coals - most of the major mines of which are underground. With all the inherent hazards in such. In addition, it’s expected that there will be a reduction to some extent in low sulfur import coal, perhaps just on a percentage basis if nothing else, which means a greater portion of coal will be mined by US miners. Thus shifting more exposure of US personnel to the mining process, and all its inherent hazards.
Every single utility and plant I’m currently working for who is building scrubbers or upgrading them is fully planning on utilizing high-sulfur underground coals, to some extent. Maybe not at every single plant, but somewhere in their system. Coupled with the continued problems of rail delivery of Wyoming coal to many places East of Nashville, and there’s a lot of incentive to get these high sulfur underground coals. And the economics really do work out; some recent contracts for these high sulfur underground coals which I’ve been involved in as “owner’s consultant” are being signed for quite low rates.
Mine safety is expected to continue to increase as technology and such continue to improve, but when it comes down to it, it’s difficult to see where and from what quarters. More active monitoring of gas, more inerting of coal dust, fewer humans underground - those can all help. To to paraphrase what you already said, some jobs in life are just plain dangerous, nasty, dirty, and hazardous.
I didn’t realize that it was one or the other. But, seeing as S and H of the agency stand for Safety and Health, and not for energy policy, it would make sense that any appointees have those principles foremost in their mind, and not the profitability of the mine owners. Some like an eeeeeeeeevil Union representative, perhaps?
From this article:
No, he was raked over the coals because he replaced an able and competent administrator with a hack.
Probably.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s necessary to appoint only former executives and others at the top of the corporate ladder. Why not get people like mining engineers, supervisors, and others whose main interest is actually mine safety rather than corporate profits, and who actually know something about the day-to-day issues of mine safety and are not weilling to compromise it for the sake of a buck?
The media’s reporting of this story was largely molded by what we in the business (or in my case, training to be in the business) call “the news cycle.”
The news cycle, for those not in the know, is the “ebb and flow” of news when looked at in relation to deadlines. Now, for the Web and 24-hour news channels, the news cycle is less important, but for newspapers it is an extremely important consideration in day to day operation.
News happening in the overnight hours and early morning is hardest for (morning) newspapers to deal with, because it’s happening at or just after deadline. Even so, some papers made huge efforts to get the RIGHT information.
Some did.
Papers out west got lucky in that the story was corrected early enough for most of them to get the correct information in. Papers on the east coast, not so much…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called back its delivery trucks at 3 a.m. for a special 23,000 print run for convenience store and newsstand sales. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette stopped its run more than halfway through to get the right story in a few more than 100,000 papers. The Boston Globe THREW AWAY 30,000 copies with the wrong information after managing to reprint with the correct one.
The L.A. Times finished the paper with the incorrect info at 11 p.m. When the accurate info hit the newsroom at 12:10, they stopped presses and got to work on a new front page, which they had done by 12:45. They recalled trucks and trashed the incorrect copies, but got all their run corrected.
The Baltimore Sun’s headline was “12 Coal Miners Alive in W.Va., Families Say”
The Boston Globe’s was “12 miners reportedly found alive”
Most others were along the lines of “12 miners alive.” Those are just the headlines. I’m unaware as to what attribution could have been found in the stories.
For looks at some front pages from around the country (including how some papers changed their fronts), see Newsdesigner.com. Also from Newsdesigner, the L.A. Times talks about its experience. Pressthink has an interesting comparison on what it thinks are right and wrong responses from editors. From Editor and Publisher, more than you probably ever want to read about the media’s performance and comments on the matter.
Apparently the tragedy is about to get worse. Fred Phelps has planned to show up in West Virginia to protest at the funerals of 12 dead miners.
It’s a PDF of the whole thing.
I can’t say that I’d feel too badly if one of the bereaved mistook old Fred for a revenue man, and speaking ill of someone’s dead kin in rural WV is like begging for backwoods justice.
I am not saying this is how the mis-reporting happened, but once again I renew my oath to never speak to the press. It is not that they are evil, but they are in a hurry. Further, I am stupid. Even at those times I have been involved in newsworthy events, I was so busy being caught up in it that any comments I offered at the time would have been misleading to the press.
I will never talk to the press.
I can’t believe he thinks he can do that and get away unscathed.
I’ve been to that area by the mine. It’s a region of the country where I can’t imagine people just letting him protest the funerals like that and walk away.
Most likely, he’s relying upon the media exposure and associated police presence to keep him safe. I guess the guy has to hope, anyhow…
That’s right. A lot of newspapers were embarrassingly wrong about this - a fact I think the TV networks discussed, probably trying not to smirk as they did so - and in fact, if you just read the newspaper the following morning without watching TV or going online, you didn’t know what really happened until someone corrected you at work. [Several of my coworkers didn’t know what had happened late that afternoon. Not that it was local news or anything we were going to cover, but I was surprised that a bunch of them hadn’t checked in that much time.]
News outlets should probably examine this and learn a lesson about caveats, but I think there isn’t much else they can do about a situation like this. They had good sources.
Despite the fact that many of the TV networks ran coverage for hours proclaiming that 12 miners lived. 'Course, they don’t have such an easily-viewable relatively-permanent public record of their screwups…it’s a lot easier to hold up a newspaper front a’la Dewey Defeats Truman than it is to replay hours of a TV broadcast.
My dad is an early-morning mall-walker. One of his walking buddies was going on about how he stayed up late following the story and thank god and so forth. When my dad told him that in reality they’d all perished but one, the poor guy nearly had a heart attack.
But I watched the Abrahms Report a day or two following the screw-up, and I don’t see how MSNBC could have verified the fact more completely than they did. He named off the sources they spoke with. Hospital, EMT, rescue workers, families, etc. It was an unfortunate mistake that I’m sure we’ll see again.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a transcript of radio communications from inside the mine during the rescue effort. Here’s what they published (bolding in original):
It sounds like the word that the miners were alive came from as reliable sounding a source as you could find. I don’t know what happened; I’m not entirely sure we’ll ever know. I am certain that the families and the news media had every reason to believe their hopes were true, no matter how unlikely that was.
CJ
I think the human mind can twist what it heard subconsciously. We all wanted a happy ending to this story, and between the chaos, breathing equipment, and a desire for good news, this guy’s brain may have registered what he wanted to hear rather than what was said. This part of the tragedy is ‘no-fault’ as far as I’m concerned. I still can’t imagine what the families must have gone through in the split second after hearing the truth. I’m not sure I’d ever recover from a blow like that.