Anderson Cooper's Nightmare
(Blog of Roger Catlin on Courant.com)
It’s a good rule of thumb to switch over to the news channels before shutting off the set at night just to see if anything big has happened in the world
Those who did so Tuesday night were first treated to the miraculous story that 12 of 13 miners stuck in a West Virginian mine were found alive. Church bells rang. Long-suffering family members hugged. The governor put his thumbs up and said “miracles do happen.”
And late night newscasts had a happy story to report right around midnight.
“It’s not often you can report a story with a smile on your face,” Bill Hemmer smiled on Fox News.
Martin Bashir signed off “Nightline” suggesting viewers watch more about “the mining miracle” on “Good Morning America.” “It was truly an extraordinary moment for all of us,” Anderson Cooper beamed on CNN, recalling the moment someone came up and yelled “12 alive!” in jubilation.
Then it all turned to hell.
In a way, it was the kind of fascinating, unfurling you can only get on a network that dedicates itself to wall-to-wall coverage of a particular story.
CNN appeared to be the only one in that business Wednesday morning. Fox News, satisfied at miracles, had since moved on to Washington scandal reporting. MSNBC played commercials for robot sweepers. “Nightline” benefited from a late start time due to the Orange Bowl in order to report what it thought was the rare, late-breaking happy ending.
But even later breaking was the truth and CNN was alone in West Virginia when it came in, from local residents who were frankly sick of them repeating the lie of survival.
CNN had showed the problems with going live with a story – with Cooper constantly talking on camera, he was prevented, of course, from doing any actual reporting.
He was at the mercy of people who happened to come up to him and give him the news – from the good old boy who ran up and cried “we got 12 alive!” at 11:49 p.m. to the woman who took it upon herself to set the record straight at 2:45 a.m.
“There’s only one person alive,” said the woman, looking like Sissy Spacek in “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” who woke her kids up in the middle of night so they could witness the miracle of the miners’ rescue. “The word has to get out.”
"All the time we heard there was a miracle," she said. "And there was no miracle."
In fact, it looked like the news media, which seemed snubbed by-and-large by family and officials for most of the ordeal, were being sought out by some locals outraged by what happened and needed to correct what was being gleefully misreported on the air.
It was remarkable that Cooper and CNN even allowed the woman to say what she did, since it flew in the face of everything everybody had been reporting for hours (and would be printed incorrectly in many morning newspapers nationwide).
“This is unbelievable,” said Cooper, who in fact looked like he didn’t believe it.
And yet her story – so opposite from what had been reported for hours – was completely compelling, coming as it did with her description of yelling, fighting and calls of hypocrisy hurled by family members from the Sago Baptist Church at mining officials. Where bells rang out hours earlier, now a yelling melee of grief ensued.
“We got out of there as soon as we could,” the woman's son, Travis, said.
A caption was so hurriedly typed below the family, it was misspelled: REPORT: FIGHTING IN CHUCH.
Cooper’s fellow correspondent Randi Kaye was collared, finally, by another family member talking out for the public good and corroborating the woman's story.
“We feel like we been lied to all along,” said a man who lost his brother-in-law. “I don’t even know if the governor knew the truth. I was very angry. I wanted to talk to the press. I think this needs to get out to the world. I think we need some answers from someone, I don’t know who.”
This is where Cooper, whose recent career rise was due to his indignation at officials at New Orleans, began to rise to his full outrage mode.
“How in God’s name,” he began a rambling question about how loved ones could be so deceived. “You hear about the fog of war. But this was not a war.”
“It is,” he said later, “simply a stunning and horrific development.”
And when he signed off, finally, at 4:10 a.m., following an hour of press conferences from the shaken mining chief and governor, it looked like he was still in shock.
January 04, 2006 in Television | Permalink
Comments
All reports say that the officials and even the Governor knew of the misinformation within 20 minutes of the report of the survival of 12.
All of the East Coast papers and USA Today reported the survival of 12. This will go down with Dewey Wins! as a great historical screw up by the press and the officials in
West Virginia.Taken in a larger sense with Katrina and the War in Iraq, I think it tells a larger story. One of paralyzed, inept authority, the depths they will go to put out false information and the sheepish press either too busy to investigate or going along with everything as if it were gospel. What a horrid state for us all to find ourselves in.
Posted by: Gregory L. Banks | January 04, 2006 at 08:49 AM
It appears none of the news reporters bothered to identify the sources and verify the story of the rumors. Print as well as broadcast news. Shame on the media for forgetting the basics of solid news reports. Verify Verify Verify. Same old Same Old.
Posted by: Chuck Renaud | January 04, 2006 at 10:05 AM
The desire of the media (and politicians, for that matter) to sensationalize a news story is the root cause of such incidents.
Recent history is replete with situations where aggressive reporting (more accurately "mis-reporting") by eager reporters has twisted a news story in new directions. The psychological fallout for the affected (e.g. the families of non-surviving miners, the family of the Miami passenger shot by the TSA, etc.) is seldom appreciated by the news media or the reporters who have moved on or UP to other stories and assignments.
To regain their credibility, front line media organizations have to institute more stringent confirmation requirements before stories are aired and penalize reporting gaffes with the same vigor and diligence that they apply in rewarding "scoops".
Posted by: P. J. Kamani | January 04, 2006 at 11:07 AM
I don't see how the press can be blamed for this one - at least not those that remained on the air to continue reporting from the scene.
The blame lays with those who knew the truth and held it for hours - the company - other officials, and the governor. Why would they do that?
And the printed newpapers can't be blamed - they're victims of their technology - unless of course their websites did not correct the news when it was reported on scene.
Posted by: Rachael | January 04, 2006 at 11:26 AM
What bugs me the most about the CNN coverage is that they reported, without verifying, that 12 miners were alive. The moment the woman came forward to say it was not true, they ran with THAT story, again without bothering to verify whether or not that version was true. I mean, good lord; if you don't know the facts, stop reporting as though you do. It was shameful.
Posted by: Kingharvest | January 04, 2006 at 12:33 PM
It's live breaking news, what do you expect?
I posted this on Metafilter earlier:
Reporter candid about time at site of W. Va. mine explosion "I've had some time to sleep and some time to think about the past two days. It's a blur. I don't often like revealing my thought processes about my work and reporting, but I need to decompress. Here's what I remember, unedited and kinda raw."
http://www.metafilter.com/user/18554
Posted by: Kyle | January 04, 2006 at 01:51 PM
I am not trying to romanticize the 'good old days', but why do I feel like Ted Koppel or Aaron Brown or Walter Cronkite would have been more skeptical, especially when journalists were suddenly being kept away from the church and the newsmakers and the expected press conference that we had been told would occur at 12.30 AM (after the happy news story had been spread) didn't occur? I think Anderson and Randy Kaye just looked young. They looked eager to keep their network on the air and get visuals-- any visuals-- in fact, was I the only one to notice they aired a visual of GERALDO hugging one of the family members???
Anyway, if this doesn't once again point up the need for a combination of veterans and youth, I don't know what does... (Remember the old adage, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out"?]
And kudos to the Boston Globe for actually STOPPING THE PRESSES and printing the correct story so that many of its readers awoke to the accurate information. I wonder how many other newspapers did that.
Donna L. Halper, Journalism Dept.
Emerson College Boston
Posted by: Donna L. Halper | January 04, 2006 at 02:05 PM
I sat up until 5 a.m. watching CNN, marvelling at their unrelenting coverage. I believe Anderson Cooper's reaction to the news of the miners actually being dead mirrored what everybody sitting up late and watching CNN was thinking. If the mining officials and the Governor knew the truth 20 minutes after the initial reports declared the remaining miners to be alive, it is absolutely inexcusable that there was no statement by minute 25 saying "We have no confirmation of that information."
That line, and others very similar to it, was bandied about freely for two days. Then, when it was 100% absolutely THE thing to say ... no one said it.
Posted by: Athena Troy | January 04, 2006 at 02:09 PM
If the Governor himself announce they were alive, how can you blame the media?
It's just a sad, horrible tragedy. We should just pray for those families and leave the outrage for another day.
Posted by: Uma Ophrah | January 04, 2006 at 03:02 PM
The root problem here is the same in New Orleans, and often in Washington. Reporters have to be more than stenographers for public officials. What was it Ronald Reagan said about the Soviets? "Trust but verify."
Posted by: H. Barca | January 04, 2006 at 03:07 PM
It's not the MSM's fault, it is the audience's fault. We glue our eyes to our TV sets and expect instant answers. Reporters are pressured to get the story first, so the network can keep the viewers, so the ratings keep ad dollars coming in, so the corporations' stock prices stay up.... How can we blame the monster that we all helped to create.
If any of us had missed hearing about how all of those turned out another 48hours would any of us feel like we missed out? How much have we really gained with the 24 hour news cycle? How many of us are participating less in it?
All news vans have scanners, a reporter picks up on some chatter, hears the wrong thing, because we all wanted them to be found alive, and the good word spreads....
Posted by: Jake | January 04, 2006 at 03:13 PM
While doubtless the media's standards and the official's communications can be blamed for this, it might be the result of a more basic issue: The very human desire to report great news. The media is not immune to this. That the tremendously positive feelings that come with reporting a miracle overwhelmed journalists' judgement, I think, should be the context for analyzing what happened.
Posted by: mikes | January 04, 2006 at 03:15 PM
"CNN appeared to be the only one in that business Wednesday morning."
It appears that someone was also awake at ABC. Nightline apparently included updated information at the end of their west coast broadcast.
You can read about it here: http://uggabugga.blogspot.com/2006/01/watching-nightline-on-west-coastwow.html
Excerpt:
"After the break, and in an update for viewers on the west coast, came the incredible news that the reports from the scene were that all miners, the first one and the remaining twelve, were dead. John Donvan, the Nightline reporter on the scene, was clearly shaken...."
Posted by: w | January 04, 2006 at 03:19 PM
A lot of people on this blog were born yesterday, apparently. The TV nets and the newspapers reported what they were told, by officials they reasonably believed knew what they were talking about. The reports were in error. People were misled. Do we have to assume evil intentions? The media is frequently accused of wanting to report bad news; here was, so everyone thought, good news, and the media was happy to report it. The media has made mistakes before. The first reports of the Munich Olympics massacre, for example, were that the athletes had been rescued. Only later was it reported that no, they were all dead. Nobody went hysterical about it. Alas, the blogosphere is about resentment and recrimination.
Can't anybody grow up?
Posted by: Sam Socrates | January 04, 2006 at 03:34 PM
Please all the media did was report what the man rising out of the mine reported.
Did you want them to climb down into the mine.
He was the "advance team".
A tragic error on his part.
In the future all involved should wait until they see them exit before declaring someone alive ... or a miricle ... because advance teams make mistakes.
Posted by: rjp3 | January 04, 2006 at 04:09 PM
The L.A. Times had the right information in this morning's print edition. That's one nice thing about living on the west coast--- we get everything tape delayed, but the newspaper has all the late baseball scores in the morning.
Posted by: Adam Villani | January 04, 2006 at 04:18 PM
quote: "The TV nets and the newspapers reported what they were told, by officials they reasonably believed knew what they were talking about."
Ehhhhhnt, wrong.
from the Telegraph: