Anyone Hear Anything About A Mine Explosion?

As we all know, I'm the Queen of Breaking News. So you know that I was parked in front of CNN until the wee hours, watching coverage of the W. Virginia miners. Unfortunately, I fell asleep shortly before what media folks call "the money shot" but I call the "balloon pop". So I fell asleep around 1:30, blissfully listening to people cheering and awoke at 5 to hear people sobbing to Miles O'Brien. Ugh.

But there are a few things that have struck me about this whole thing, other than how absolutely horrifying the whole thing had to be, and how many lawsuits that the company owning the mine will now be facing...

(Warning: my language here isn't terribly polite, but f*&^ that s%#$. This isn't a Charlie Brown Christmas Special.)

1) Okay, this one goes back to Iraq, Katrina, and even some of my own personal experiences - how f*&^ing hard is it to tell people the TRUTH about something before they find out in the worst way possible? In last night's case, the mining company had a decent idea within 20 minutes of the false report that there were going to be more deaths. All that CEO of the company had to do was walk over to where Anderson Cooper was doing his live shot and basically tell the world to hold its horses. He wouldn't have had to say they were probably all dead (or almost dead) or anything - just that the reports out of the mine were inconclusive and that people needed to hold off on the celebrating until they had the final word. THAT would have been fair to the families. THAT might have prevented the clusterf*&^ that happened over two hours later when he dropped the bomb in the church. And news flash -- deflecting the blame onto others during and after the fact (i.e. calling a news conference the next day to explain how this is really not all your fault) doesn't fix anything, and usually makes the people who are actually dealing with this feel even worse. It's all well and good to feel bad in retrospect when you see the footage of people cussing you out on CNN after you kept your mouth shut, or when actually get around to seeing the people starving on the streets of New Orleans that you didn't/couldn't help, or whatever actually happens when people find out the real truth of a situation and end up really hurting. And believe me, they always do. And even if you're not around to see how much it screws up the people, there's no way that you'll end up better. If nothing else, give the media some credit for their ability to dig and just own up to your mistakes sooner than later. You might even come out looking better than a dickless weasel in the end.

2) Speaking of the media, some people think that CNN has some apologizing to do. Once again, I cry BS. Anderson was anchoring live from the scene, not working as a field reporter or producer. How in the bloody hell is he supposed to go verify the things that people are coming up and telling him in the middle of a live shot? Was he supposed to sneak down to that mine and check it out himself? And of course he was calling it "a miracle." What else do you call something like that? And did anyone who watched him in action during Katrina honestly expect him to show no emotion? And how much more verification do you need during a breaking news situation than church bells ringing, people dancing around in celebration and EMS workers driving by giving the live team thumbs-up signs? It's not the media's fault that #1 happened, and they shouldn't get the misplaced blame for it, just because no one bothered to pass the truth along. Having worked in a newsroom and working in conjunction with one now, I can tell you that when something's aired that's dicey in the factual department, you usually get a phone call within about two minutes of it airing. Those live guys were there reporting and reacting to what was going on around them. It's easy to say in retrospect that they should have waited, but if you were actually watching and seeing the commotion, there was no way. It would've been like waiting to air footage of the NOLA mess until FEMA confirmed that it had actually happened. In any case, I'm now looking very forward to seeing Anderson giving Mr. CEO the Landrieu treatment in the very near future.

3) I would like to give the people of West Virginia credit for coming off as intelligent, respectful people. They managed to do it in a way that some of the reporters noted with such increduality that you'd think that they were expecting characters from "My Name Is Earl." I think they were much more relatable than anyone else in the country has ever given them credit for being. As far as their "we're gonna kick someone's ass" reaction to the bad news this morning, I think that's pretty damn understandable under the circumstances. In fact, I would daresay that if you've ever had a drop of true redneck blood in your veins, you would react in a similar way. And rednecks (I'm using the politically-correct definition of this, since I don't believe they all have a chaw and look like Kid Rock) are all over this nation, and I daresay we've all got it in us. So no one needs to get all holier-than-thou on this.