posted
Did anyone else hear about the press mistake concerning the miners? Our local newspaper printed it as "12 miners found alive, 1 missing." I guess it was like that everywhere. And they just came on the local news to tell us that "oops, sorry! 12 miners are DEAD, and 1 is ALIVE!"
This kind of makes me mad. Whatever happened to verifying sources? I can understand that a message coming from underground might be a little garbled, but can't they at least ask the message-giver person to repeat himself? I was celebrating all day, and now all they say is "oops!"
"oops" doesn't begin to describe that kind of a mistake. Especially for the families of those that were reported alive and are actually dead.
Posts: 1591 | Registered: Jul 2005
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It wasn't the press what screwed it up. The head of the mining company admitted that his office screwed it up.. The press reported on the information they received from a primary source.
The admin of the mining company was unable to correct their mistake for at least 3 to 5 hours after they made it!
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
this is the third thread on it, and in my oppinion it wasn't as much the press as the mine's fault, the families found out, and the press used the 100s of people in the church as verification.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
From what I understand, it was a bit of both. The press ran on a rumor they got out of the mining company from an unofficial source. As I understand it, someone overheard the search party's report that they'd found 12 of them, and interpreted that to mean that the 12 were alive. That person leaked it. The mining officials screwed up by waiting to have confirmed information from the search officials before disavowing the rumor. And the press screwed up by running with an unconfirmed rumor, much as it came from the organization that should be in the know. There were NO official announcements that the miners were alive, as I understand it.
Regardless, it was a cruel situation for the poor families.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
The way I just heard it explained, a search party member used either a cell phone or a walky talky, through an oxygen mask, back to the main office, everyone in the main office (hoping for the best) misunderstood and one person called a relative who was at the church, who made an announcement, the press who was meeting at the church with the whole town reported, an associated press picked it up, at that point, it had gotten out of hand. The office finally heard the truth, but waited over an hour before they sent anyone to the church to tell what was going on, by then newspapers had already been printed.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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