Posted on 01/03/2006 8:53:18 PM PST by Pimpmygop
Edited on 01/04/2006 12:02:58 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
(Update Per Fox News 11 of 13 Miners Dead at 3:00AM EST 1/4/06 One Miner in critical condition)
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Fox News - 12 found alive!
Perhaps that's a good thing. (The MSM needs to ponder the "convention center" stories, and now this).
I meant to add: I also suspect this was the result of the rescuer/communicator consciously putting the good news first (one is alive) before he said something like, "we've located all 12". Today, everyone is media savvy and I imagine he was thinking the best thing to do was to put the positive first.
It would be easy, among those on the receiving end, for someone to jump to a false conclusion based on such a report.
read later
For the record: YES
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060104/ap_on_re_us/mine_explosion
Hatfield blamed the wrong information on a "miscommunication." The news spread after people overheard cell phone calls, he said. In reality, rescuers had only confirmed finding 12 miners and were checking their vital signs. But what leaked out to anxious family members was that 12 were found alive.
It reamains unclear whether the company officials in the command Center were even aware that the "12 alive" story had made it to the national newswires.
With the CEO playing it so straight up, I've got to think that this is what happened. He's been a real trooper through the whole mess; tolerable of the inane reporter's questions, I can't see this same guy knowingly allowing bad data like "12 alive" to run unchecked throughout the national media.
And I suppose it's EASIER looking into their faces and reporting "OOPS, Only One"?? C'mon, the press should have played it straight up from the get-go and emphasized that the early report was UNCONFIRMED, UNOFFICIAL and still pending a final announcement from the Command Center.
They didn't. They just couldn't. Instead, they jumped the shark and took the whole nation on a sickening psycho-emotional thrill ride just to stroke their J-School egos and keep the cameras rolling.
There'll be a special place in Hell for their kind.
Reminds me of the 10,000 dead Katrina mistake. The media is a mess. They go with uncomfirmed rumors. Disgraceful
So much for "two sources" always being required by the MSM!
Here, the only thing was "Get (scrambled and incomplete breaking news) to the phones first!"
it's McCloy
A terrible blunder by the media and whoever was in charge of public relations with that company.
I heard a FOX reporter on Sean Hannity's program today, and Sean was a bit angry with him, because he seemed cagey with the facts. Obviously, the mining company was giving out facts with an eye dropper because they wanted to "confirm" everything. Problem was, they didn't have a leash on the crummy MSM, which was ready to explode with news (good or bad) and was so cocked and loaded they couldn't control themselves.
Anyways, you can find sick, sick, sick, and some evil reading at Democrat UndergroundThere's some lovely posts there blaming Bush and making excuses for the media.
-Eric
The "Breaking News" ticker that ran along the bottom of the screen of WTAE Pittsburgh during the last parts of the Orange Bowl make it very clear that the reports of 12 alive were "unconfirmed by officials". This was up until the end of the game (12:45 EST), when I went to bed.
From what I understand, wire reports were correct in mentioning this as well. Looks like the 24 hour cable news nets really dropped the ball here.
Inane?! I thought several questions from some of the reporters were quite sensible, such as why it took between two to three hours before the families were told the correct fate of the miners. To which Hatfield answered that he wanted to find out more about the status of the miners before contacting the families (after the second report from the mine to the command center), which makes absolutely no sense and doesn't answer the reporter's question. Hatfield should've been a stand-up guy and told the families immediately that the first report was incorrect, and that not all of the remaining twelve miners had survived. Hatfield also skirted around a few other *sensible* questions from the reporters, so please don't make Hatfield out to be an honest, stand-up guy. Apparently the governor also found out about the "12 alive" flub around the same time as Hatfield, and chose to "take the fifth" as well. Talk about "I have no spine and I can't scream!"
this is his career if he doesn;t handle it properly...it reflects his awareness of that as much as anything.
prisoner6
It's not true, and it's going to be the theme of the media's criticism for the next few days apparently. They knew twenty minutes later that the 12 alive report was not correct, but they didn't know what the correct figure was. So, if you follow the media second-guessing, they'd have had to go to the ecstatic families and say, "don't celebrate quite yet, 'cause we don't have a confirmed number." Then, if they did all survive, the company would have been attacked for dashing people's hopes, then renewing them. Instead, they're being attacked for letting people hope until they could figure out what the facts were. It's one of those "heads I win, tails you lose" situations the media's so fond of... anything they'd done after the initial erroneous report would have produced criticism.
Every time you hear a reporter ask why the company waited to tell the families until they knew what the facts were, ask yourself exactly they would have said, given that they didn't know anything, and whether that would have potentially been worse than taking the time to find out the facts first.
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