Thursday Download
What a game. I was glad to see a national championship game live up to the hype. Although I was cheering for USC (theoretically them winning makes the Hogs marginally look better since then we can say at least we were obliterated by the national champion 70-17), Texas made the plays and was every bit the champion when it counted. Vince Young. Wow.
Slate's always informative Explainer column tells us that USC Championship T-shirts might be on their way to Haiti.
Wash Post's Howard Kurtz is finally back from vacation and analysis the "they're alive!"..."no they're not" snafu in the tragedy of the trapped West Virginia coal miners. Locally, LT's Dashboard sarastically notes the Dem-Gazette (whose print editions also carried the "they're alive" headlines) didn't offer much in the way of late breaking news or updates on its Web sites. The D-G still doesn't seem to know what to make of the Internets.
And Jonworld reader Alan G joins me in getting all "caught up" in the excitement over the discovery of the world's largest prime number. He writes, "Unable to restrain the generated excitement, I ran and grabbed my calculator and of course my slide rule. And as the minutes and hours slowly slipped away into the night, I lavished myself in the world of mathematics. And in the wee hours of the morning when the old mind was exhausted from hours of mathematical fantasies I laid my head down and gathered in a bit of rest. ...
Slate's always informative Explainer column tells us that USC Championship T-shirts might be on their way to Haiti.
Wash Post's Howard Kurtz is finally back from vacation and analysis the "they're alive!"..."no they're not" snafu in the tragedy of the trapped West Virginia coal miners. Locally, LT's Dashboard sarastically notes the Dem-Gazette (whose print editions also carried the "they're alive" headlines) didn't offer much in the way of late breaking news or updates on its Web sites. The D-G still doesn't seem to know what to make of the Internets.
And Jonworld reader Alan G joins me in getting all "caught up" in the excitement over the discovery of the world's largest prime number. He writes, "Unable to restrain the generated excitement, I ran and grabbed my calculator and of course my slide rule. And as the minutes and hours slowly slipped away into the night, I lavished myself in the world of mathematics. And in the wee hours of the morning when the old mind was exhausted from hours of mathematical fantasies I laid my head down and gathered in a bit of rest. ...
posted by JP at 8:05 AM
2 Comments:
My Grandfather was a coal miner in southern WVA and my dad grew up around mining and had an interesting insight. Despite our tremendous advances in communications its still easier to talk to a man on the moon than someone who's 200 ft below ground. Cell phone and other communication is spotty and the rescuers know that anything less than 3 part communication (sender reports, receiver repeats, sender confirms) can't be trusted.
The command center folks should know that just short of personally shaking their hands, they have to KNOW the facts before they make decisions or announce anything. Its frustrating and doesn't fit well with 24/7 news coverage, but its the way it has to be.
It appears what happened is that well meaning journalists who were unfamiliar with the process or the communication difficulties involved overhead random threads of communication and ran with it.
For example VOA reported that the mining company CEO believes that journalists heard "survivors", "13" and "alive" in the same communication and the snow ball began.
One interesting note, considering that many of the print journalists who are basically saying "well, we did the best we could" right before launching scathing attacks on the mining company to divert attention away from their lack of professionalism, is this:
There is one organization that strictly adhered to the creed of "verify before reporting", who refused to play the game of scoop or die, who simply would not say anything until they had the whole story and who ultimately is taking flack for not correcting the journalists in their midst even though the were on record as not having any statements until they knew the facts ...International Coal Group.
I'm sorry, but it seems a little like a cornered 10 year old, the media at large are knocking themselves over trying to point out how bad the mining company is.
The Governor and the media, who often think of themselves as a class of professionals rather than employees (and maybe appropriately) blew it, but the company did that part right and they should NOT take heat in the form of "..yeah, but why didn't stop me from doing something stupid?"
Interesting insight indeed. From some of the things I've read, the scene was quite chaotic before the announcement and apparently some (media, family members and others) got their "12 survived" info from a muffled loudspeaker and ran off to spread the word before it could be properly confirmed.
Then comes the media frenzy not to be last to report the news...and it gets out of hand there. It was horribly handled. The one story I read that sourced its "survived" info was the NY Times that attributed it to family members and a state official. Does that make it right? No. But at least it adheres to proper journalistic techniques of attributing any information to some source. Now as for double-checking the info, that's where the system breaks down and the speed of the 24/7 news channel and the Internet make putting the bullet back in the gun that much harder.
My criticism of the mining company - aside from wanting to know more about those safety violations at the mine - is that they apparently didn't move to correct or at least calm down the breathless reporting of the incorrect information. What I read was that there was a 3 hour lag. Surely someone with the company is watching CNN, Fox and the others and see what's happening. They could've come and said, "That information, though we all pray it to be true, has not yet been confirmed by rescuers at the scene."
I hope and suspect we'll hear more about how the erroneous reports happened.
Thanks for the comment, Paul.
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