Comments on: The Deadline Twilight Zone http://www.notnews.org/culture/the-deadline-twilight-zone.html Philosophy, public affairs and pop culture. Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:51:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Dave Thomer http://www.notnews.org/culture/the-deadline-twilight-zone.html#comment-64 Dave Thomer Thu, 05 Jan 2006 06:39:31 +0000 http://www.notnews.org/?p=78#comment-64 I do think the safety issue will be explored a lot in the weeks ahead, but there's something very visceral about the mixup that I think serves as kind of a distillation of the whole thing. From what I've seen today, it looks like folks in the command center had corrected information long before the families did. And I can definitely see how people would feel like withholding that information is a cruelty on top of the accident itself. The former you chalk up as something of an occupational hazard; the latter just seems like carelessness and cruelty. And it may well be that the latter tells us something about the former. And all of that is on top of the question of how this story was and was not sourced by the media. Understanding that is crucial to any hope that the mistakes don't get repeated. I do think the safety issue will be explored a lot in the weeks ahead, but there’s something very visceral about the mixup that I think serves as kind of a distillation of the whole thing. From what I’ve seen today, it looks like folks in the command center had corrected information long before the families did. And I can definitely see how people would feel like withholding that information is a cruelty on top of the accident itself. The former you chalk up as something of an occupational hazard; the latter just seems like carelessness and cruelty. And it may well be that the latter tells us something about the former.

And all of that is on top of the question of how this story was and was not sourced by the media. Understanding that is crucial to any hope that the mistakes don’t get repeated.

]]> By: Earl Green http://www.notnews.org/culture/the-deadline-twilight-zone.html#comment-63 Earl Green Thu, 05 Jan 2006 03:04:39 +0000 http://www.notnews.org/?p=78#comment-63 I've been deeply troubled by the developments of the past 20 hours or so on this story. One thing that arouses my ire in a way that few other things do is a rush to place blame before doing anything about the problem, or worse yet <em>in lieu of</em> doing anything about the problem. Now, here, since we have 12 guys dead...not much <em>can</em> be done about it, and I understand that. But the rush to find someone whose head can be chopped off over an announcement that, at least according to what I've read and seen so far, doesn't seem to have been officially made by...well...<em>anyone</em>, at least not until the governor got hold of it and gave it some semblence of credibility, seems premature. I think the real story from here on out will lie with the safety record of the mining company in question. To obsess over the miscommunication is a red herring at best. The men were already dead, and the miscommunication among rescuers on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning did not cause any loss of life that hadn't already happened. I know there's an unbelievable amount of anguish and grief that may have been caused by the premature announcement, but I'm also finding it unbelievable how much energy and anger is being directed at that facet of it, and not at what happened in the first place that caused this event. That just strikes me as surreal. We too had a case here where one local newspaper reported that only one man died, and the other waited long enough to report that only one had survived. It's stuff like this that has me piping up in the middle of everyday conversations and debates with "What's your source on that?" (And I'm not even a reporter.) I’ve been deeply troubled by the developments of the past 20 hours or so on this story. One thing that arouses my ire in a way that few other things do is a rush to place blame before doing anything about the problem, or worse yet in lieu of doing anything about the problem. Now, here, since we have 12 guys dead…not much can be done about it, and I understand that. But the rush to find someone whose head can be chopped off over an announcement that, at least according to what I’ve read and seen so far, doesn’t seem to have been officially made by…well…anyone, at least not until the governor got hold of it and gave it some semblence of credibility, seems premature. I think the real story from here on out will lie with the safety record of the mining company in question. To obsess over the miscommunication is a red herring at best. The men were already dead, and the miscommunication among rescuers on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning did not cause any loss of life that hadn’t already happened. I know there’s an unbelievable amount of anguish and grief that may have been caused by the premature announcement, but I’m also finding it unbelievable how much energy and anger is being directed at that facet of it, and not at what happened in the first place that caused this event. That just strikes me as surreal.

We too had a case here where one local newspaper reported that only one man died, and the other waited long enough to report that only one had survived. It’s stuff like this that has me piping up in the middle of everyday conversations and debates with “What’s your source on that?” (And I’m not even a reporter.)

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