Plays Well With Others

Irresponsible Journalism…

Tuesday night, Wifey™ and I were flipping through channels and got sucked into the CNN report that the trapped miners had been found alive. We watched reporter after reporter, including Geraldo, report that 12 of the 13 miners were alive and, miraculously after 41 hours, would be walking to the church were their families were waiting. Sounded too good to be true, but all of these seasoned, fact-checking reporters were saying the same thing. We figured that by the morning, the trapped miners would be on the Today show laughing about their ordeal.

If we’d stayed up, we’d have heard that three hours later that miraculous news would turn to grief and despair. Instead of one death and twelve miracles, it turned out to be one miracle and twelve deaths. Not to mention a host of families wanting a lot of answers. We should have known when we saw Geraldo out there that something would go wrong.

The question I have is how did the media perpetuate this? Supposedly, word came from the command center unofficially through cellphone conversations and spread to the families, which then spread to the reporters willing to grab onto any nugget, any scoop and then toss it on the air without checking at all with the actual rescue teams to find out if there was any truth. Blame also goes to the mining company for not putting a stop to the reports immediately, instead waiting three hours before giving the bad news.

My main problem is with the irresponsible journalism though. Within a three hour timeframe, they had more than enough time to do some fact checking or at the very least put up constant disclaimers that they hadn’t received official word and that it was just speculation. Unfortunately our media has become more of a game than a source for information. They’re all in such a rush to have the scoop, to be the first, that they don’t follow their basic fact checking rules first. It’s not the first time either. Anyone remember when Gore won the election with Florida’s votes? And then Bush won? And then it was undecided? Yeah. Oh and on 911 when the Capital had been blown up and all of the Senators were dead. Yeah. Again, the media at it’s finest.

The problem is that when something big is going down, the first thing Americans do is to turn on their televisions. And during those times, it’s the media’s responsibility to shut down the showmanship and just to deliver the facts. The facts that have been thoroughly checked so as to avoid false hope or false despair. I understand that during a crisis it’s not always easy to do a thorough investigation prior to a news report, but at the same time, sometimes it’s better to say nothing than to say something that just isn’t true. I’d be more willing to wait an hour for correct news, than to hear something immediately that may or may not be true.

I’m sure these eleven families right now are thinking the same thing. One family knew from the beginning that their relative had passed away immediately and one family was saved the news that their relative had passed on—eleven others didn’t get so lucky. They’d have been better off hearing nothing, since they were already prepared for the worst. Now the media, the governor and the mining company have a lot of answering to do.

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