The Media and West Virginia

Many of my blogging brethren have been quite critical of the media's role in the West Virginia mining disaster. Although the media certainly played a part in the dissemination of false information on Tuesday night, and as much as I dislike the mainstream media, I'm having a hard time drumming up as much outrage as others.

Let's look at it from the media's perspective. They're trying to report from a remote mine location in West Virginia. They have no ability to witness for themselves what's going on in the mine, but must rely on other sources for their information, including mine officials, politicians, and the family/friends of the miners.

At some point Tuesday night the word gets out that 12 have been found alive. The place goes nuts as families begin celebrating the great news. Church bells are ringing and joy is breaking out all over. What's the media supposed to do at that point? Ignore it? When mining and government officials are not quick to squelch the rumors, I think it was quite reasonable for them to report what was going on.

Granted, they should have prefaced their reports as "unconfirmed", but I think it would be completely unreasonable to expect the media, in competition with others in their trade, not to report the apparently good news. Everybody wants to be first.

Some are suggesting that they should have asked more questions, and maybe they should have, but who would they have asked except the very same people who were spreading the bad information to start with.

The real source of the problem Tuesday night was the actions of the mining company which did not immediately address the rumors and allowed the celebrations to go on more than 2 hours after they knew the information was bad. You can't blame the media for that.

It was not the media's finest moment, but I don't think they deserve all of the criticism they've been receiving.