Once Again, So Very, Very Wrong
Last night during a break in the action of the Penn State-Florida State game I flipped over to one of the 24-hour cable news networks and saw a banner plastered across the screen declaring that all but one of those 13 miners trapped underground in West Virginia had been found alive. I was genuinely cheered by this. Despite the fact that this story was one of those made-for-Cable News dramas that the networks had predictably jumped on and over-done, flooding the country with all the easily-exploited images that you'd expect--agonizing family members, all-night prayer vigils, corporate honchos fumbling through exercises in spin-control, politicians speaking in hushed tones and working hard to look so very concerned--I really had felt terrible for these working men and their families who brave such dangerous conditions on a daily basis because it is some of the only work available to them that pays a living wage. So I was happy to hear that all but one of the thirteen miners had survived.
Of course, as I watched I could see the way the direction in which the news networks' coverage was moving. Predictable as night following day, the credit for the good news could only be given to God and the piety of the American Heartland. The TV images flowed: Family members raised their arms to the sky, church bells rang, professional jackass Geraldo Rivera jumped in front of whatever camera he could find and started hugging people. After the initial flush of good feeling I quickly became disgusted at the predictable swing in the tone of the media exploitation and turned back to Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden and their choke-tastic placekickers. The game went very late even here on the west coast, and so when PSU finally managed to put a kick through the uprights in triple-overtime, I went to bed.
When I woke up this morning and turned on the TV I, like the rest of the country, found out that the good news about the miners had been the cruelest of hoaxes. Apparently, in a nightmarish, grown-up version of the child's game "telephone", someone had gotten the message all wrong. Family members celebrated for almost three hours before word reached them that it was all a mistake, and that all but one of the miners had, in fact, died underground. This morning USA Today, The New York Times and The New York Post, among many others, feature horrible "Dewey Defeats Truman"-type headlines declaring that all the miners but one had survived. And it goes without saying that the cable news networks, always more interested in presenting sensational television than actual news, once again got caught with their pants down.
It is an all-to-human foible to readily accept as true news that one wishes to be true. Perhaps the media was partly just hoping for a happy ending, as we all were. And surely, the joy of those relieved family members must have been irresistibly infectious. For these reasons one might be inclined to forgive the news media for once again getting caught up in the hype and getting the story completely wrong.
But I won't let them off the hook for this reason: Rather than actually checking facts and reporting what could and could not be verified, the media was clearly more interested in figuring out which script to follow. Obviously the media believes (perhaps correctly) that people don't want complex information and uncertainties; they want information presented to them in a manner and mode that they already understand and can easily process. They want a story with identifiable characters (good guys, bad guys) that follows a pattern they are familiar with and comes to a definite, easily-understood conclusion. In other words, they want a movie script. When the joyous but sadly incorrect information was given to family members that the miners had survived, the news media made the decision that it was time to switch to the "Miracle in the Mine" script, and boy did they run with it. In just the five or ten minutes I spent watching the news coverage (I think it was CNN, but a quick flip to a couple other networks confirmed that everyone was reporting that 12 men had been found alive), I must have heard the word "miracle" a dozen times.
I know that it's Fox News' world and the rest of us just live in it. But someone has to hold these institutions accountable. The Press provides a service that is invaluable in a free society, but when drama becomes more important than accuracy and accountability, terrible things can happen. Today all that happened as the result of the media snafu was a lot of egg on a lot of faces. But who knows, next time the media's failure to do it's job might lead to something really terrible, like the United States stumbling into an unnecessary war and thousands of casualties based on bad information. Then where would we be?
And one other pet peeve: Why is it that in situations like this anything good is attributed entirely to divine intervention (i.e. "miracle"), but when anything bad happens the first question is always "who's going to get sued?"
Of course, as I watched I could see the way the direction in which the news networks' coverage was moving. Predictable as night following day, the credit for the good news could only be given to God and the piety of the American Heartland. The TV images flowed: Family members raised their arms to the sky, church bells rang, professional jackass Geraldo Rivera jumped in front of whatever camera he could find and started hugging people. After the initial flush of good feeling I quickly became disgusted at the predictable swing in the tone of the media exploitation and turned back to Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden and their choke-tastic placekickers. The game went very late even here on the west coast, and so when PSU finally managed to put a kick through the uprights in triple-overtime, I went to bed.
When I woke up this morning and turned on the TV I, like the rest of the country, found out that the good news about the miners had been the cruelest of hoaxes. Apparently, in a nightmarish, grown-up version of the child's game "telephone", someone had gotten the message all wrong. Family members celebrated for almost three hours before word reached them that it was all a mistake, and that all but one of the miners had, in fact, died underground. This morning USA Today, The New York Times and The New York Post, among many others, feature horrible "Dewey Defeats Truman"-type headlines declaring that all the miners but one had survived. And it goes without saying that the cable news networks, always more interested in presenting sensational television than actual news, once again got caught with their pants down.
It is an all-to-human foible to readily accept as true news that one wishes to be true. Perhaps the media was partly just hoping for a happy ending, as we all were. And surely, the joy of those relieved family members must have been irresistibly infectious. For these reasons one might be inclined to forgive the news media for once again getting caught up in the hype and getting the story completely wrong.
But I won't let them off the hook for this reason: Rather than actually checking facts and reporting what could and could not be verified, the media was clearly more interested in figuring out which script to follow. Obviously the media believes (perhaps correctly) that people don't want complex information and uncertainties; they want information presented to them in a manner and mode that they already understand and can easily process. They want a story with identifiable characters (good guys, bad guys) that follows a pattern they are familiar with and comes to a definite, easily-understood conclusion. In other words, they want a movie script. When the joyous but sadly incorrect information was given to family members that the miners had survived, the news media made the decision that it was time to switch to the "Miracle in the Mine" script, and boy did they run with it. In just the five or ten minutes I spent watching the news coverage (I think it was CNN, but a quick flip to a couple other networks confirmed that everyone was reporting that 12 men had been found alive), I must have heard the word "miracle" a dozen times.
I know that it's Fox News' world and the rest of us just live in it. But someone has to hold these institutions accountable. The Press provides a service that is invaluable in a free society, but when drama becomes more important than accuracy and accountability, terrible things can happen. Today all that happened as the result of the media snafu was a lot of egg on a lot of faces. But who knows, next time the media's failure to do it's job might lead to something really terrible, like the United States stumbling into an unnecessary war and thousands of casualties based on bad information. Then where would we be?
And one other pet peeve: Why is it that in situations like this anything good is attributed entirely to divine intervention (i.e. "miracle"), but when anything bad happens the first question is always "who's going to get sued?"
posted by Yukon Sully | 6:35 AM
2 Comments:
I think that the TV news channels cover these stories as simply observers (as the viewers are). The fact that someone came running out of the rescue area saying that a report was heard that 12 of the 13 were alive is simply part of the story. The fact that the officials failed to tell everyone for an hour or so that the 12 men were not alive but dead is also part of the story that had to be relayed to the waiting world. In this case, it was not the reporters' jobs to get accuracy-- they were just there to telecast the unfolding story, truths and untruths and all. Of course, they would have preferred to be accurate, but it wasn't their faults that the wrong information was leaked out to the crowds. They should have waited for an official statement from the mining company administrators, but church bells pealing and townspeople shouting were impossible to ignore.
Melissa and I had this same debate; I still feel the press did a rotten job, particularly the print media. Literally dozens of major newspapers printed "ALIVE!" headlines, and a lot of them presented the information as fact, not as "we can't confirm any of this but here's what family members are saying." My biggest problem with the cable networks is that they're more interested in presenting drama than in informing people. Frankly the whole thing shouldn't have been a TV spectacle anyway, because accuracy is always the first casualty when that happens. But if they're going to go wall-to-wall coverage, then I have to disagree with you--I think they absolutely have an obligation to relay accurate information, not just point the camera at something and say "figure it out for yourself." Besides, I distinctly remember all the news channels running banners that unambiguously said something like "12 Miners Found Alive" If they're going to do something like that, they need to be sure it's true. But they'd rather have drama, excitement and simplicity; accuracy doesn't seem to be so important and that's a problem.
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