Vanity: WV Trapped Miners Story Exposes the MSM --- AGAIN!!!!

Me, of course! | 4 January 2006 | Erik Latranyi

[KeyLargo]

This media circus reminds me of an old Kirk Douglas movie that I saw. When I saw Whore-Aldo Rivera on FOX running up to miner families with a microphone in his hand I flashed back to that movie and slime ball reporter that Kirk Douglas portrayed.


Ace in the Hole (AKA The Big Carnival) (1951)
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling Director: Billy Wilder Rating:

Storyline

Genres: Drama, Film-Noir
Plot Outline: When a man is trapped alive in a mine collapse, a self-interested reporter and the townspeople cynically create what we now call a "media circus".
Plot Synopsis: One of several literary and artistic works based on events surrounding the 1925 entrapment and death of W. Floyd Collins in Sand Cave, Ky. See also Robert Penn Warren's novel _The Cave_

http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/379/379350p1.html

Ace in the Hole (a.k.a. The Big Carnival), 1951, co-wr/dir. Billy Wilder. This is a deeply cynical Film Noir sadly based on an actual 1925 tragedy. Charles Tatum (Douglas) is a down-on-his-luck, obnoxious journalist who once worked for a big city newspaper but is now stuck at a small town paper in New Mexico. The hard-drinking Tatum finds his meal-ticket back to the big leagues when a miner named Leo Minosa becomes trapped in a cave-in.

Tatum hypes the event into a national news story, engineering a lucrative media frenzy and a despicable public circus while also duping Minosa into believing he's his savior. Even though Minosa could be rescued more quickly by shoring up the cave's tunnels, Tatum, who's eager to keep this "big carnival" in town, convinces the rescuers to employ a lengthier drilling process instead. Going along with Tatum's ambitious plan is Minosa's greedy and conniving wife (Jan Sterling) who's looking to cash in on her unanticipated notoriety. Tatum's plan, however, goes tragically awry. The final low-angle shot of Tatum collapsing into frame symbolizes his self-propelled downfall.

Ace in the Hole is a grim but eerily prescient look at the media's unquenchable thirst for "the big story" and the public's willingness to play along. Wilder mercilessly eviscerates the gawking masses that set up shop to commercialize Minosa's tragedy. Although a box office flop in its day, Ace remains a relentless indictment of the public's and the media's appetite for entertainment and fortune even at the expense of human life.

[McGavin999]

Perfectly understandable human error. We all wanted it to be true.

God, I hate this finger pointing more than anything. Instead of standing at each others side during a time of trial, we all go running off trying to find out who was to blame.

Death is part of life, and dying is going to happen. Nobody would deliberately kill these men. We just need to wait and find out the facts. Unfortunately facts don't seem to matter much anymore.

[Dianna]

Seems to me, they could have waited a little bit longer to break the news. The families were in church, anyway, they could have been given the news when they came out.

The families were coming out of the church and telling the reporters that "They said that the men are alive." The families sounded as though they had gotten an announcement from someone in the church.

[EricT.]

Wonder how they'll handle a dirty-bomb going off in Manhattan?

They'll wish they had some of that duct tape they sneered at a few years back.

[GottaLuvAkitas1]

"It is terribly sad, but everyone jumped the gun because it was what they wanted to hear."

Well said.
Here is another thing to think about as well, it took the mine officals nearly 3 hours to correct the false story. My question is why?
20 minutes after the church was celebrating the "great news" the officals knew that the church had the story wrong. So, 20 minutes turn into nearly 3 hours before the "offical story" is given to the church.
Someone told me it takes time to make sure that all 12 were indeed dead, and that sounds resonable- but 3 hours? I don't think so.
What was going on for 3 hours that one person could not go into the church and correct the false story?

[Phsstpok]

From a "bloggers" perspective, the criticism of the MSM that will emerge from this incident is not that the MSM was wrong on this one, but that the distinction that the MSM claims, i.e. "only substantiated information", is undermined in a very big, critical, and very, very emotional way.

Exactly. And it completely refutes their criticism of blogs.

Anybody can be wrong (just look at me), but I don't claim to be infallible. They do. Worse they just ignore and blow past their gross errors and distortions. For example, the WaPo still hasn't responded to the numerous and very detailed criticisms of their sliming of Roggio that was riddled with blatant factual errors. (do a google of roggio "washington post" for complete details)

[jwpjr]

The news, from the reporter's standpoint, was not that the miners had been rescued, but rather that people in the church were saying they had been rescued. The reporter's obligation is to report what he or she knows for a fact. The only fact the reporter had at this point was that people were saying there had been a rescue. The very first report, even on Fox, was not that word was being spread that there had been a rescue, but rather Donna Veducia (sp?) was reporting it as fact.

I know it seems cruel to hold the press' feet to the fire under these circumstances, but there are standards designed to avoid just this sort of outcome. When those standards are abandoned, for whatever reason, it's a mistake to overlook the transgression. If it's overlooked in this instance then it will more difficult to hold someone responsible the next time it happens.

This same kind of mis-reporting has been going on for years, mostly aimed at the Dubya administration. This is no more egregious than much of the reporting that has been done regarding the President. The difference is that this has to do with real people, not a president that the press hates.

Every profession has its standards. Often the standards seem overbearing or unnecessary to those outside the profession. But it's those standards that give the profession its integrity. The standard for pilots is that they never trust anything to memory, but depend on a written checklist for every takeoff and landing. Failure to respect that standard is asking for trouble.

Again, I am not blaming the reporters or the reports, but rather saying that if they had adhered to the accepted standard(s) for their profession we would not be having this discussion.

[don-o]

there were actually people on it happily gloating that the families in the church celebrating DIDN'T get the good news from the media but from other sources.

We got our share of moonbats, no doubt.

[GottaLuvAkitas1]

"Again, I am not blaming the reporters or the reports, but rather saying that if they had adhered to the accepted standard(s) for their profession we would not be having this discussion."

With that I have to agree with you 100%.

It was not my intention to impy the MSM has no blame. I wanted to make sure that the people who thought that the press started this story and spead it to the families knew that was not the case.
This is a sad story all around and there will be many to blame in the end. The press once again got it wrong and there is no doubting that because it is fact.

BTW, I think you write very well. I end up losing it half way through. LOL

[1Old Pro]

I agree, the MSM did not CONFIRM the news with the mining company which would have been the authority to distribute any factual info.

[1Old Pro]

what is the journalist supposed to do?

Perhaps they should have CONFIRMED the story. They could have reported that the families were reciving good news but that they haven't confirmed it yet.

[Dianna]

God, I hate this finger pointing more than anything. Instead of standing at each others side during a time of trial, we all go running off trying to find out who was to blame.

I think a lot of people are just trying to figure out what happened. It's important. Once we find out what happened, we can figure out how to, possibly, keep it from happening again.

[1Old Pro]

All these news agencies want to be first!

Imagine if instead of wanting to be first, they wanted to report factual news. If even ONE news outlet stepped up and said we cannot confirm this but will report what other news outlets are saying they would now be the only news outlet that could say they reported facts, not innuendo or "overheard" communications from third party sources.

[leprechaun9]

I saw Jerry Rivers on FOX this morning showing the tape of the response from the initial good news, that unfortunately was wrong.

However, many hours later to show this tape shows that FOX as well as the other media outlets are morally and ethically bankrupt.

The pimps of the media strike again.

Where are the tapes of the Partial Birth Abortion Procedure?

Why don't we see the 911 tapes of the people jumping out of the WTC every day? Then we could see the media holding up scorecards, 5.7; 5.3; 5.9!

[Dianna]

What was going on for 3 hours that one person could not go into the church and correct the false story?

Probably because no one wanted to say, "that isn't true" without being able to say what WAS true. It takes time to find out what the whole situation is. You don't want to compound the problem by giving out more misinformation.

Perhaps they were thinking that it was all news hype and that "real" family members knew to wait for official news?

[Churchillspirit]

I think we,as the viewing/listening public must take part of the responsibility for the pace at which Breaking News is reported.

We are impatient for information. I've read threads on this very forum complaining that CNN has the story - why doesn't FOX?

Perhaps this tragic story will give us all pause.

May God bless those poor folks in WV

[daybreakcoming]

The family members are the ones who count here-not us.

Must keep that in mind. Not defending the media because I despise 9/10's of them. The media are not the ones who told the families that 12 survived. They told the rest of the world that without confirming....as per usual.

[McGavin999]

True, but you can't figure out what happened when you only have a small part of the facts. Instead, like New Orleans, a lot of speculation leads to blame being placed incorrectly and thus nothing is done to correct the real problem.

You ask most people and they'll tell you that thousands died in the convention center, and they will tell you that people were being killed and starved. That's because nobody every corrected the record to the same extent they covered the error. What's that old saying again? "A lie can make it around the world before the truth gets it's pants on".

[Churchillspirit]

Bill Hemmer is a class act. His mea culpa this morning was a testament to that.

[jwpjr]

re: It was not my intention to imply the MSM has no blame

I knew what you were saying, and I was agreeing with you.

It's a sad commentary on today's world that any outcome that's considered less than satisfactory has come to mean having to find someone to blame it on.

My Dad (RIP) used to say the difference between blame and responsibility is that that those who accept responsibility get to keep their job!

I find it helpful to dissect situations like this and try to find out at what point it could have gone a better way. This is a pretty simple one to dissect. Had the press involved limited their reporting to only what they knew first hand to be a fact there would not have been the rush to announce a rescue that had not happened. The Fox news lady announced a rescue had been made and turned it over to the reporter on the scene to provide details. He commenced to simply repeat what he was hearing from people who had heard it from others. That's not reporting.

I find it fascinating that there is so much ado about this particular story, but other much more egregious examples of really shoddy reporting are acceptable.

re: BTW, I think you write very well

Thanks for the kind words. I owe that to my Mom (RIP) who was very insistent that words were important and had meanings and those meanings were important. God bless her!