Detractors and Defenders

The debate about how much blame the media deserves for the "miscommunication" in West Virginia continues in earnest today, with a number of new outlets trying to explain their behavior.

Len Downie, executive editor of the The Washington Post, was defiant: "Our story was a reflection of what was being said at the time," he said. "I don't regard it as our error, but as an error by the people in charge of the rescue." CNN's Jonathan Klein also defended his outlet, saying the story was tied to "two pretty good sources" – West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin and and West Virginia Rep. Shelley Moore Capito. (Nightline executive producer James Goldston said something similar.) John Robinson, editor of the News & Record of Greensboro, North Carolina, wrote that "we regret" that "the story on the front page was tragically, tragically wrong," but he took issue with Greg Mitchell's characterization of the media's performance as "disturbing and disgraceful." (Mitchell later deleted the word "disgraceful" from the piece.)

"Should reporters on the scene have done more reporting, trying to pin down someone who truly knew?" wrote Robinson. "Yes, of course, but that's easy to say from the comfort of an office. Had one of our reporters been there, I doubt that we would have demanded other sourcing at that time of the night. Should we have waited to publish, even as all of our wire services were reporting the same thing? No, although I wish we had. I don't know how we could have been so prescient."

On cnn.com, Anderson Cooper wrote, "For those of us in the media, I'm not sure what we could have done to keep this news from spreading like it did…When you have the governor of the state giving you the thumbs-up, a congresswoman talking about this on air, hundreds of relatives and family members jubilant, some of who received calls from mining officials, it's tough to ignore what they're saying." Added Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute: "When the governor himself seems to confirm the information, there are not many among us who wouldn't go with it."

In a note to readers, meanwhile, USA Today, which like many papers reported that 12 of the 13 trapped West Virginia miners had been found alive, said "This documentation proved inadequate and fell short of USA TODAY's professional standards." (A sentiment echoed by Wichita Eagle editor Sherry Chisenhall, who wrote, "Today, we fell short.")"What an awful night for the news media," wrote Brian Williams. Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism, said the incidence underscores the fact that "journalists have to acknowledge the limits of their knowledge. If you have doubts, signal the doubts."

Stu Bykofsky invoked an old journalistic cliché – "If your mother says she loves you - check it out" – and wrote, "As far as I could tell early yesterday morning, TV had no authoritative sources…This is what happens when the 24-hour news cycle collides with the cable networks' willingness to gullibly air almost anything. The fundamentals that reporters should have learned in Journalism 101 - check it out! verify! - go out the window." Joanne Ostrow was harsher: "Proclaiming a miracle with no verification is a travesty."

"One of the problems on display in [the] miner coverage was the misplaced emphasis on being 'first' with a story," wrote an emailer to TVNewser. "Breaking a story is far less important than being accurate, and the rush to provide information before the competition can and does lead to incorrect and incomplete reporting. It's more about ego than journalism." The Anchoress writote that "particularly since Hurricane Katrina, mainstream journalism has decided it doesn't need to run on facts; emotionalism is the new fuel on which the press is running, and it is a bad, bad gas - it sputters and sprays and belches out errors all over the airways, all through the ink barrels, and once the errors are out there, they become either (in a best-case scenario) tough narratives to reclaim or (in the cruelest case) weapons of devastation and destruction."

Scott Libin also invoked Katrina. "This case reminds us of a lesson we learned, at least in part, from Hurricane Katrina: Even when plausibly [reliable] sources such as officials pass along information, journalists should press for key details," he wrote, adding: "[S]urely what the mayor or police chief or governor says deserves at least some healthy skepticism and verification. I understand how emotion and adrenaline and deadlines affect performance. That does not excuse us from trying to do better."