Broken News

By now I'm sure you've heard this story.

The more important matter, of course, is the story itself -- the loss of 12 lives and the suffering of 12 families. But I thought I'd share a glimpse of the story behind the story, and how it unfolded in the newsroom where I work.

Deadlines at our paper were already a bit screwy last night due to the triple overtime Orange Bowl, but in addition to scrambling to get reports of that game into our later editions, the copy desk also had to work fast to cover the breaking news from West Virginia.

"'They're alive'; 12 of 13 miners survive ordeal" reads the headline on our lead story on the front page. "Relieved families celebrate 'miracle' after men spent 41 hours underground," was the reader. Below that was a picture of family members rejoicing over the good news.

The paper's last lift -- the last chance to get breaking news into the next day's edition -- is at 2:30 a.m. That deadline came and went and the last of our papers were printed.

A 2:57 a.m., as trucks were heading across the region with copies of today's paper, a news alert came across the AP wire: "Families say 11 of 12 miners reported to have survived have died." About 3 a.m., our press room was told to stop the presses on USA Today, but it was too late. The presses had already stopped and those papers, too, were bundled and on their way to newstands and paper carriers.

By 3:30, a full rewrite had appeared on the wire and I was able to post the online-only story above while watching the surreal press conferences on MSNBC. The families of the doomed miners had been led to believe -- somehow -- that their loved ones were alive. And for three hours, this seemed to be what everyone believed. Those three hours included the deadlines for just about every newspaper on the East Coast, so we all found ourselves in a similar situation. (Even the astute Eric Umansky fell into this three-hour gap in his Today's Papers column in Slate.)

The grief of the families is more important than the embarrassment of the newspapers, of course, but today is not the proudest day for newspaper journalism. You can survey the various front pages at the Newseum. Most of the West Coast papers were able to print the correct story (although many, inexplicably, did not), but those with EST deadlines nearly all got it wrong.

"Miners Alive" reads The Miami Herald. "'They're Alive'" says the St. Petersburg Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. 12 Miners Found Alive 41 Hours After Explosion" says The New York Times. The Daily News just reads "ALIVE!," with an overline attributing the rescue to divine intervention, "MIRACLE IN WEST VIRGINIA."

The Boston Globe has a more responsible headline -- the one every East Coast paper should have run: "12 miners reportedly found alive."

More on this in a bit.

Comments

[Ray]

I wouldn't kick yourself too hard over this. It's a feature of deadlines - some information comes in late. Sure, there was no official confirmation that the miners were alive, but there didn't seem to be any doubt about the matter. And most of the people closely connected to the miners weren't getting their information from the newspaper anyway, they were at the mine or hearing from people there, and most likely hearing the same message as your reporters heard. So you weren't raising false hopes in the hearts of the immediate families. (As a general rule, I'm pretty sure that the closer you were to one of the miners the more attention you'd be paying to the breaking news on TV and radio. It's only casual observers who would be depending on the papers)

So now, it's not an hour you'll want to remember, but it's not as serious an issue as the other problems with newspaper reporting that you've talked about over the years.

[John Martin]

It wasn't just the East Coast. Both major papers in the Twin Cities, Minnesota ended up running the erroneous story as well. Locally USA Today blares the headline you gave with a picture of what is assumed to be happy family members of miners. That picture probably hurts more than all the headlines.

[David]

I was quite surprised this morning to see that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that landed on our lawn had the correct story. Especially since I went to bed after the Orange Bowl last night at 1:00 believing that the miners had survived.

[Will Fitzgerald]

I notice the Anniston Star had 'Relatives report 12 coal miners alive' under the main headline.

[Ab_Normal]

Technical question: I'm in Washington state; the local paper had a color picture of the happy families, but the headline and story were about the deaths. Could that be because they didn't have a picture of the grieving families, or because they had the happy family pic ready to go when they got the changed story?

[Dave]

I saw the SF Chron and SJ Mercury News side-by-side while walking to work this morning. The MN headline was 11-of-12 survived, and the Chron was 11-of-12 died. But both had the same photo, taken when word came that they'd lived. With the Chron, however, it was blown up so the caption was below the fold and not visible in the box, so you couldn't see that it was correctly labeled as a before picture.

[Beth]

The grief of the families is more important than the embarrassment of the newspapers

YES, IT IS. So please, tell your friends in the media to please STFU about the "miscommunication." It's starting to become the MAIN story, when it is clearly not appropriate. I watched the TV coverage in the middle of the night; I saw family members rejoicing. I believed it, and I didn't need newspaper commentary or even TV anchor commentary to tell me what to see. The FAMILIES said on live TV "they're alive," so what else should we believe? I don't blame the media one iota for reporting events as they unfolded. That WAS news, even though it was based on a misunderstanding ("They're checking vital signs...").

I'm admittedly no cheerleader for the mainstream media, but the ankle-biting from other bloggers on the left and right about this story is petty and misguided, just as the media's navel-gazing is embarrassing, self-centered, and misguided.

[Chuck Dupree]

Wow! This is a weird situation, when the Boston Globe gets it right and the San Jose Mercury News, with the benefit of west-coast deadline times, has it wrong.

[LL]

The headlines should have reflected that there were reports that all the miners had survived, not that they definitely had (Alive! Miracle in West Virginia!). Until reporters saw all the missing miners pulled out of there, they shouldn't have communicated third-hand information. Yeah, deadlines are tough, but the problem is, lots of news people cut corners even when they don't have to. Anonymous sources, third-hand reports, speculation from people far removed from the story, etc. seem to be the norm now, not the exception. The press is supposed to question people, and it seems they've decided that's too much trouble. Easier just to print/broadcast whatever you can get somebody to tell you and then print/broadcast a retraction later. They should just begin every report with "We're not sure about this, but..." It would at least be honest. The point isn't that they were wrong, the point is that they implied they knew something for sure when they didn't. They're all so intent on being first with a story, they seem to have skipped the part where you're supposed to find out whether or not it's true first. At least that's what I learned in journalism school about 20 years ago.

For the record, the Dallas-area papers got the story wrong, too.

[syfr]

The problem I have is that we're talking about the media, not about the safety violations and lack of union protections at the mine.