In Chapter 6 of Blur, “Evidence and the Journalism of Verification,” Bill Kovach
and Tom Rosenstiel tell the story of the January 2, 2006, Sago Mine disaster in
West Virginia to illustrate the journalist’s need to verify information by
knowing it as opposed to merely relying on observation.
The tragedy of the mine’s explosion was
compounded by the tragedy of the media’s misreporting of the number of
survivors. Thirteen miners were trapped
in the mine. Initial media reports went
out saying twelve miners had survived (meaning one hadn’t), but the reality was
horribly, ironically the opposite: twelve miners had perished and only one had
survived.
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| Ariail, Robert. Robert Ariail. "The Miners Are Alive!" Editorial Cartoon. The State. 6 Jan. 2006. |
I remember this story well and have used it
in Journalism I before in a discussion of ethics.
Like many newspapers across the country,
Columbia’s newspaper, The State,
published the story on January 4, 2006.
Once the truth of the number of survivors
came out, the media’s thought and decision-making processes were evaluated in
detail.
On January 5, 2006, The State ran two explanatory pieces about what went wrong from the
media’s perspective. Unfortunately, a quick
search of the internet didn’t produce any links to these pieces.
The first was headlined “Late-hour
revelation hamstrings media” with the deck “A Chronology of Confusion.” This
was a sort of standalone that included a timeline attributed to Cox News
Service and graphics of other newspapers’ front pages showing how they had
published the same error.
The other explanatory piece, a story headlined
“Erroneous reports lead to media soul-searching,” was datelined New York and
attributed to wire reports. The story
details how the news of the real death toll wasn’t widely known until after
most newspapers, particularly on the East Coast, had already printed and begun
distribution, whereas newspapers on the West Coast were a bit more reliable
because of the time difference: The Sacramento
Bee published the story headlined “Joy to Despair,” and the Los Angeles Times was able to recall
trucks of papers with incorrect stories.
In a rather quaint fashion (compared to
today’s lightning-fast social media reporting), the story pointed out that most
internet and television news outlets were able to correct the mistake before many
news consumers woke up that morning.
The
State
localized the story in a sidebar by explaining its own publication timing and showing
graphics of two different versions of the paper’s front page. The first edition, printed to be sent to the
far reaches of the state (Charleston, Greenville, Myrtle Beach, Spartanburg)
ran a story headlined “One body recovered; ‘we need a miracle.’” The Capital Final edition, which is the
version most Columbia-area residents would have received, was redesigned and sent the presses in about thirty minutes with the headline “12 miners rescued; 1
dead.”
I see now that combined with The State’s former staff cartoonist,
Robert Ariail, and his perspective (the cartoon above is so old, it’s not even
in his online archives), along with the discussion of the events in Blur, these explanatory pieces can be used
to teach other concepts aside from ethics: building relationships with the
audience, gathering and use of evidence, independent confirmation, skepticism, sourcing,
transparency, verification.
If only this gold mine of a lesson hadn’t
come from a coal mine of disaster.
