SAGO AND THE PRESS….Over at Courant, Roger Catlin examines television coverage of the West Virginia miner-miracle-turned-disaster and comes away unimpressed. Greg Saunders does the same for newspaper coverage, and he’s not impressed either.
So what really happened here? CNN has this explanation from mine company chief Ben Hatfield:
“What happened is that through stray cell phone conversations it appears this miscommunication from the rescue team underground to the command center was picked up by various people,” Hatfield said. “Simply overheard conversation was relayed through cell phone communications without our ever having made a release. International Coal Group never made a release about all 12 of the miners being alive and well.”
Did the wire services and cable news channels simply decide to report this apparently unverified information as fact? Or is Hatfield not telling us the whole story? Hopefully someone out there is working on the definitive story of how this happened.
