Case Study: A Double Disaster at the Sago Mine

The scene was Sago, West Virginia, just before midnight on January 3, 2006. Forty-one hours after an explosion killed one coal miner underground and trapped twelve others, church bells pealed and jubilation filled the town: “They’re alive!” A dozen ambulances surged toward the mine entrance. Police cars’ sirens screamed in triumph.

West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III was at the SagoBaptistChurch speaking with family members of the trapped miners. He immediately left for the command center. On the way to his car, strangers hugged him and, as he related later, “I hugged them back.” As he drove away, reporters said they asked him if the report was true, and he answered, “Miracles do happen.” (Later, the governor’s communications director said that what the governor told the reporters was: “I don’t know. I’m heading up there right now to find out what’s going on, but believe in miracles.”)

If you are a reporter, what do you report?

Those who were at Sago that night reported that the twelve miners had survived. Most attributed the information to family members, and some also mentioned the apparent corroboration from the governor. But the attributions went largely unnoticed in the story while the headlines heralded the euphoric information that a “miracle” rescue was taking place.

We know now that the news was tragically wrong – and that it would not be corrected for three hours, by which time most American news consumers were asleep and after many newspapers had printed editions heralding the wrong report. A day later, the Los Angeles Times reconstructed the events that led to the mistake:

Two and a half miles into the mountain, twelve men were clustered behind a makeshift shelter, and one of them was moaning.

The rescue crew swarmed him. In the dim light and slowed by their protective gear, they scrambled to assess the man’s injuries, administer oxygen and find the best way to carry him through the debris-filled tunnels.

In the feverish rush, one or more rescuers spoke into the radio transmitters inside their oxygen masks. They needed to get word to a base camp nearer the mouth of the mine: They had found all twelve men. One was alive.

At 11:45 p.m., the base camp staff heard the transmission and passed it on to rescue teams at the surface.

But somewhere along the way, the message got garbled. …

Base camp was on the line, on speakerphone – and the news was better than anyone dared hope. Not one miracle, but a dozen: “It came across,” said Gene Kitts, senior vice president [of the mining company], “as twelve alive.”

Mine officials had warned everyone in the command center to keep any news bulletins to themselves until they could be confirmed. But this was incredible news. Such an uproar swept the office that the command staff couldn’t hear further reports from base camp. They ordered all nonessential personnel to leave.

The joyous crowd spilled into the parking lot, and disregarding their earlier instructions, began dialing their cell phones.

When he heard the rejoicing at the church, Governor Manchin asked members of his staff whether they had confirmation of the rescue. They said they did not. He did not tell the crowd this. It was easy to interpret his euphoria, and his comment about “miracles,” as corroboration. Manchin said later that when he reached the command post, he saw professionals celebrating just as the families had. He said he himself began to think there truly had been a miracle.

At 12:30 a.m., base camp called the command center to report that the rescue crew had arrived with just one survivor. Ben Hatfield, president and chief executive of the mining company, said later that he and others clung to “the fervent hope” that the others, still in the mine, might be just comatose. He did not send word to the families that the earlier report might be wrong. “We didn’t believe there was any productive benefit of saying, ‘It could be one, could be twelve, we have conflicting reports,’ ” Hatfield said later, although he acknowledged that he had made a mistake in allowing the erroneous report to go unchallenged.

The mining company would remain silent for three hours. Finally, at 3 a.m., Hatfield came to the church and told the family members there was only one survivor. The crowd angrily refused to believe him. One man had to be restrained by police.

At Sago, journalists struggled to ascertain the truth when everybody they saw was convinced that the miners had been saved. They reported what they heard, and from whom they had heard it.

The command-post spokesman was Joe Thornton, deputy secretary for the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety. He told Editor & Publisher magazine that he fielded more than a hundred phone calls from journalists that night, most of them in the first half-hour after the celebration began. He said his response to each was, “We are hearing that twelve miners were found alive – but that has not been confirmed.” However, the magazine noted that The New York Times quoted Thornton by name as saying that twelve miners had been found alive and that “the miners were being examined at the mine shortly before midnight and soon would be taken to nearby hospitals.” Thornton told the magazine he had not said that, but the Times reporter, James Dao, was certain that “what I wrote was what I understood him to tell me. … He didn’t say that he couldn’t confirm.”

Television reports by CNN and Fox News went uncorrected for three hours; CNN’s Anderson Cooper was interrupted on camera by people bearing the horrible correction. Newspapers in eastern and central states went to press with the wrong reports. The Philadelphia Inquirer, which had held its presses well past their normal start time in order to cover the PennState-FloridaState triple-overtime game at the Orange Bowl, ran with the wrong story the rest of the night. The New York Times had incorrect stories in all its print editions. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette stopped its presses at 3:18 a.m. to remove front pages with the headline "Miracle at Sago, 12 Miners Alive,” which had run in 132,000 papers, and to insert the right story into the remaining 114,000 papers. Benefiting from the three-hour time difference, the Los Angeles Times got the correct story to its readers, but only after recalling delivery trucks and discarding 204,861 newspapers with the wrong story.

Later, news organizations assessed the damage. Criticism within the profession was restrained; many journalists who were not there were reluctant to blame those who were. The Houston Chronicle wrote: “If there is such a thing as a pardonable news media sin, this story offers the example.” Managing editor Mike Silverman of The Associated Press said, “AP was reporting accurately the information that we were provided by credible sources – family members and the governor.” Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of The Washington Post, defended his reporters’ sourcing and said, “The mistake was not ours, it was the authorities at the scene.”

Still, the public had been misinformed, and those who depended on newspaper reports were the mostly likely to have received the wrong information. The timing of the wrong report, right on deadline for morning papers, meant that many copies had gone out with the wrong story. And unlike broadcast and online outlets, newspapers could not correct their mistake in print for twenty-four hours.

“The question that a lot of journalists probably wish had been asked of the governor is, ‘How do you know that?’ ” Butch Ward, distinguished senior fellow at the Poynter Institute, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “The national press corps is asking it more often to officials in Washington and being called arrogant for asking. But it’s an important question to ask.”

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, told The Houston Chronicle: “I think that when you’re not sure about something, but you’ve got to go with the best you’ve got, that’s when we should be as circumspect as possible. The way to do that is to be as clear as possible with the public about what we have and what we don’t have and what the sourcing is. Under the circumstances, it’s hard to imagine that reporters at the scene would be skeptical. On the other hand, that is what we are supposed to do.”

Howard Kurtz, media writer for The Washington Post, was blunt: “While the mining company’s refusal to correct the misinformation for hours is inexplicable, the situation was exacerbated by the journalistic reluctance to say the facts are unconfirmed and we just don’t know. Experienced journalists should have understood that early, fragmentary information in times of crisis is often wrong.”

Questions for class discussion:

  • Imagine that you were a reporter covering the Sago mine disaster. Knowing what you know now, what would you have reported when the celebration began?
  • Should the newspaper headlines have contained attribution?
  • Did any of the people celebrating in the town really know that the trapped miners were alive?
  • Did the governor really confirm the rescue?
  • Why is it important for reporters to ask the followup question “How do you know that?”
  • Journalism teachers like to say, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Why is it important for journalists to maintain professional skepticism at all times? How does skepticism differ from cynicism?

Sources

  • Tina Moore and Jeff Shields, “Joy at mine: 12 are alive.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 4, 2006.
  • Joe Strupp, “Editors explain why they announced ‘miracle rescue.’ ” Editor & Publisher, Jan. 4, 2006.
  • Mary Flannery, “Not a miracle at all.” Philadelphia Daily News, Jan. 5, 2006.
  • Jonathan Peterson and Stephanie Simon, “West Virginiamine tragedy: Cruel hope began with a garbled message.” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 5, 2006.
  • Robin Abcarian and Matea Gold, “Media take a hard look at what went wrong.” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 5, 2006.
  • Larry Eichel, “How the media got it wrong.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 5, 2006.
  • Milan Simonich, “Mangled message created heartbreak.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan. 5, 2006.
  • James T. Campbell, “Miners' story an example of a pardonable media sin.” The Houston Chronicle, Jan. 8, 2006.
  • Joe Strupp, “Spokesman in miner tragedy says he never confirmed miracle rescue.” Editor & Publisher, Jan. 8, 2006.
  • Howard Kurtz, “Mine disaster’s terrible irony: A failure to look deeper.” The Washington Post, Jan. 9, 2006.
  • E-mail exchange with Lara Ramsburg, director of communications for Governor Joe Manchin III.
  • E-mail exchange with Joseph C. Thornton,deputy secretary for the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety.