Replies

MSM: "The governor and the CEO should be ashamed of themselves and should have checked their sources. It was not our fault, we got our news from the governor and officials at the scene..."

E&P: "That initial story clearly stated that neither the governor nor the International Coal Group Inc., which operates the mine, had confirmed the news."

MSM: "In the grand scheme of things does it really matter who messed up? What are we going to start pointing fingers now...BTW Sharon is on his death bed and the Miner story is old anyway..."

99% of the media are incompetent hacks. They DO NOT do their jobs.
When I was growing up my Dad was a TV reporter and anchorman for ABC News in CT.
I remember watching the news with Dad and him yelling at the TV stuff like...."c'mon, what are you doing"...idiots, where is the source/follow up?", ect...
I learned at a young at that if you want to nave NO CLUE whats going on, read a newspaper or watch the TV News.
Not much has changed.I am so thankful for the net and this site, I can do my own research on most subjects and get to the facts.

Unfortunately with the above story you are relying on the media at hand...I can hear my Dads voice in my head.."where is the source? what are the people in charge saying? Where is the official spokesman of the mine? What are they saying? Where is the follow up?"

The New York Times attributed the news to two sources: family members, and a less-than-definitive statement by an official in the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, Joe Thornton. ... Oddly, in an extensive Web search, E&P has been unable to find any other quote from Thornton in any other publication, except those that had picked it up from the Times. It is also unclear what role Thornton was playing that night or how he talked with James Dao, the Times reporter. Dao has not returned calls from E&P. Attempts by E&P to reach Thornton on Thursday also failed.

Well, looky here - The Times gets caught fabricating news again!

I have to find it to officialy source it, but yesterday I did a google seach on "12 Miners Alive" to see who had erased those pages as if they never happened. Most, not all were foreign papers.

As for the orginal source, another one quoted a family member as saying as they were gathered in the church, someone (fellow miner? nit sure) came running up the holler saying "They're alive! They're alive!"

I'm going to go find that source now......

This E&P Report is the BEST yet I've seen/read on what exactly happened with this unfortunate turn of events. Good detail; good information. Glad to finally know exactly what happened, what was said by whom, when, etc. It's all so unfortunate; there really isn't any one person to blame; HOWEVER, media-types were obligated to have firm confirmations from top officials and they failed to obtain those confirmations...therefore, they are without excuse for the actions that night.

As for the governor and the CEO, like others have said, hindsight is 20/20. In retrospect, obviously they should have had someone in an official capacity, get back to the church as soon as it was apparent that the initial report of "12 alive" was incorrect...if only to have alerted everyone to be cautious to the fact that nothing could be confirmed and that there was still doubt as to who and how many were alive. Just IMHO. But we are all only human--prone to mistakes...and as heartbreaking as this is for the families, NO ONE intended any harm, maliciousness, etc.