The Media Is Only As Good As Its Sources
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in MediaWe’re learned this time and time again, most recently with the miner scandal. That’s why I’m not nearly as pissed at them as most are.
From E&P:
It took nearly three hours for the coal company to correct the reports. It is unclear why the media carried the news without nailed-down sourcing. Some reports claim the early reports spread via cell phones and when loved ones, and the governor, started celebrating most in the media simply joined in.“About the confusion, I can’t tell you of anything more heart- wrenching than I’ve ever gone through in my life. Nothing,” Gov. Manchin, who had helped spread the good news, said.
I know people are coming down on the media pretty hard, but I think this is a situation where too many people are killing the messengers. They reported what they knew, and even though the mining company knew the information was wrong, they continued to let the media hang themselves.
In reality, rescuers had only confirmed finding 12 miners–and were checking their vital signs. But what leaked out to anxious family members was that 12 were found alive. The coal company, it later admitted, knew that the early reports were false 20 minutes after they started circulating, but did not quickly correct them.
Just a couple things to keep in perspective.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2006 and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 5th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
January 5th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
For some reason my “” tag never took in my previous post. Just to clarify, the first paragraph is from Justin’s entry and the second one is my response.
January 6th, 2006 at 12:38 am
What I find particularly galling is the crowing in the blogosphere about this. Clearly a lot of the attacks on the media about this are coming from bloggers who relish every opportunity to play gotcha with the mainstream media. While there were certainly mistakes made, a lot of people seem to be missing the point that this had nothing to do with bloggers. Sitting at your keyboard criticizing those who were in the middle of a chaotic scene, trying to make sense of a story when the only really reliable source, the company, was witholding information, may be comforting. But the fact remains that bloggers had nothing to do with this story, and every mistake by the traditional media isn’t a victory for bloggers.
However, feel free to go after Rita Cosby as much as you like.
January 7th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
I’m pretty, strike that, very critical of the MSM, but this is just a mistake. Reporters used to qualify early reports by saying “We have a report and we will try to confirm it.” Or : “We have a rumor.” if that is what it is. The company was too slow to correct and it will be interesting to see how aggressively the media sought confirmation. Resisting the contradiction of good news is pretty human all around. I think it is fair to say that competition to be first has speeded things up and perhaps the MSM need to build in some of their older conservatism. Living in Australia I haven’t seen the actual reporting of either the mining disaster or even that much Katrina coverage but I get the impression that too much rumor is getting through as fact and often staying uncorrected. I think this is a fairly minor problem and is emmenently correctable. Just fact check and correct more rigorously and label first reports and rumors as such. I believe, the deeper problem is the MSM’s failure to recognize that their monopoly on defining the narrative has been broken. That said the MSM have pretty regularly claimed superiority over the blogsphere in the area of fact checking safeguards and they have to expect come curry when they blow one badly.