Miner’s Alive!

That was the headline that greeted millions of American’s this morning as they awoken thinking that all was well with the 13 trapped miners in West Virginia. Unfortunately, the headline were wrong and once again the Main Stream Media in it exuberance to be the first on the scene with the story, and be damned if it’s true of not got it all horribly wrong.

As was originally reported “Officials and rescue supervisors were gathered at a command post near the mine when the voice of a rescue worker crackled loudly over a speaker phone, saying they had found 12 miners and were checking their vital signs. Somehow, Hatfield and everyone else in the room who heard the call believed they were being told the men were alive.

Word spread rapidly to the relatives, though it is unclear who was the first to tell them. "Everyone ran from the church screaming, 'They're alive! They're coming!" said Loretta Ables, whose fiancé, Fred Ware, was among the missing miners. She had lost hope when she learned about the dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide in the mine but she was elated as she waited outside the church. "I feel great, very great," she said.

"They're alive, all of them," someone shouted outside the church.”

However, the joy of the moment was shattered not long after that as Ben Hatfield, CEO of International Coal Group announced to joyous family members that the report was wrong; they were not all alive only one of the men was still alive.

When is the media going to learn that it needs to verify stories before it runs to the presses with its news? Apparently, not soon enough for now the families of 12 miners who were told that their loved ones were alive, and the millions of American’s that were following this story and praying for a miracle are being told the truth. The end result of this incident was tragic, but the real tragedy is the way the media handles these types of incidents. They become media events, circuses if you will, and the rush among the reporters is to be the first with the story. My thoughts and prayers are with those family members that lost their loved ones, and I hope that the media will learn their lesson soon.