Let us hope that, if there is an afterlife, there is a place in hell reserved for the creators of the “24-hour news cycle.” It brings us all manner of speculation and misinformation, and precious little news.
When I picked up The Denver Post from the sidewalk at sunrise Wednesday, I felt sorry for whoever had put together the front-page headline, “Hopes fading at W. Va. mine.”
That edition had obviously gone to bed before the wonderful news had come out late Tuesday night that 11 of the 12 trapped coal miners had been found alive. That must have been so, for I saw it on “fair and balanced” Fox News at about 11 p.m. Tuesday. The paper went to press before that with “Hopes fading,” and instead, the good people of Tallmansville were celebrating the survival of their husbands, brothers, sons and uncles.
But on Wednesday morning it turned out that the older headline was more accurate than the more recent TV story. Of the 13 trapped miners, only one had survived.
How did the wrong story get out so quickly? First, we start with the 24-hour news cycle, which demands constant updates. Covering a big story, the herd of on-air personalities, camera operators, producers and others all need to keep feeding the beast with recent developments. If they don’t have any, people might change channels, and that hurts ratings and the bottom line. To ensure that there’s something on the air about the disaster du jour, find a couple of telegenic experts and get them to speculate interminably.
Further, the reporters are roped off in some zone where they can’t know much about what’s really going on. There are good reasons for that. The herd would be in the way of actual rescue work.
And, if I were in church with friends and relatives, all supporting one another while fearing the worst for loved ones trapped underground, the last thing I’d want would be some blow-dried android sticking a microphone in my face and asking me how I felt.
So, lots of broadcasters with lots of technology, all eager for a new development. They all had to rely on, not on what they saw themselves, but on what they were told – and that often came at third- or fourth-hand.
Ben Hatfield, CEO of the mining company, held a news conference and explained that people overheard cellphone calls with rescuers in the mine. They had only confirmed finding 12 miners, and the rescuers were checking their vital signs. But it got interpreted by eavesdroppers as 12 miners being found alive.
“The information spread like wildfire, because it had come from the command center,” Hatfield said, and West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin said he had been told of the survivors.
So in a sense, the TV reporters were doing their jobs properly. The command center and the state’s governor are certainly “official sources,” and they reported what came from those sources. It just happened to be wrong.
That’s the systemic problem with the 24-hour news cycle. It demands those constant updates, which means reporting what everybody at the scene is talking about, without time to check things or to wait for details – such as the actual condition of the miners.
As a print journalist who has generally had time to tie up some of those those messy loose ends before filing a story, I know that the real situation is often quite different from the “initial reports.” The TV reporters and mine personnel doubtless know that, too. But excitement and wishful thinking led them astray.
The fault was not all theirs, though. The fault is in the system. And this system exists because of us. I can’t be the only one who thought, “I want the latest on the trapped miners before I go to bed.” We want the latest developments, and the 24-hour news channels try to deliver, even if “the latest” turns out to be wrong later.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
Editor’s note: Early editions of Wednesday’s Post carried the headline mentioned in the column. Later editions reported 12 miners had been found alive, while final editions reported only one survivor.
