12 miners — not found alive

Newspapers throughout the country, including the Tracy Press, reported in today's papers that 12 trapped West Virginia miners were found alive.

All day, we'll have to live with our headline, which reads, "12 trapped miners reported alive." Unfortunately, by the time most of us woke up this morning and got our first news reports, we found out that we got it wrong.

When I went home last night, the story that was planned to run on the missing miners in West Virginia led with the news that the body of one miner had been found by rescue crews. Then around 11:15 p.m., right before we went to press, the Associated Press issued an alert and then a story about how, in an extraordinary twist of fate, 12 of 13 miners were found alive.

One of our copy editors called the newsroom shortly afterward from out of town to make sure we had the revised story, and slot editor Goldie VanHeel was quick to reply, "We're on top of it!"

Another copy editor, Jon Mendelson, was hesitant, though, in declaring with such certainty that the miners were alive. He suggested that the headline should say that the 12 coal miners were reportedly found alive.

For the next several hours, the AP sent repeated updates, with more details from the scene, including celebration and expressions of gratitude from family members. Each update reported that the mine's owner, International Coal Group, had not confirmed that the 12 were alive."

But it wasn't until 2:59 a.m. — well after Tracy Press editors had gone home for the night and Wednesday's papers had been printed — that the AP moved this alert:

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. (AP) — Family members report that 11 of the 12 coal miners who were initially thought to have survived an explosion in a coal mine have died. The sole survivor is hospitalized."

Early this morning, we got this e-mail from a reader, who is absolutely right:

"I would like to correct your newspaper on the fact that
in today's paper (01-04-06) there was an article written by Allen Breed about some miners that were trapped in a Virginia coal mine. In this article, it stated that 12 out of the 13 miners were found alive, (but) the opposite is true. Only one out of the 13 miners were found alive. I believe that this was an honest mistake and nonetheless should be corrected for respect of the 12 miners who lost their lives."

And so we will.

Posted by cmatthews at January 4, 2006 02:42 PM

Kudos to the TP for adding the word reportedly to the headline. That showed a journalistic instinct that others lacked.
I turned on the TV news sometime shortly after the first networks started reporting that there were 12 miners alive. In hindsight, it is now obvious that the journalists on the scene should have reported and repeated that they had no official confirmation that the men were alive. I didn't see any of the reporters who were on at that time adding a mention that all of the reports were unconfirmed.
Any journalist who reported that these 12 miners were alive without being able to attribute it to an official source should be penalized for it. We will enforce this the old-fashioned way. Each offender will have to write on paper 100 times, with a number-two pencil, "I will not publish facts without a source.". If the same person was also assigned to Hurricane Katrina reporting, make them write it 500 times. Mr Cooper, get to work!

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