Trust in press undermined

The rush to tell the story and the pressure for constant and instantaneous reporting led to the misreporting of the fate of 13 men trapped in a mine in West Virginia, highlighting once again the absence of fact-checking in often tragic stories

US media – print, broadcast and web-based – are in the throes of another bout of self-examination in the wake of the Sago, West Virgina mining disaster earlier this month. On Tuesday and Wednesday, 3 and 4 January, news media across the United States became embroiled in the most widespread, most damaging and most embarrassing instance of misreporting of news since the Chicago Tribune published its infamous "Dewey defeats Truman" edition in the aftermath of the 1948 US presidential election.

The respected Editor & Publisher magazine drew the comparison with 1948 a day after the Sago disaster. But the Sago debacle makes the Dewey-Truman incident seem trivial by comparison. Indeed, Truman treated it as a joke. When presented with a copy of the Tribune in St Louis, the incoming President pointed at the headline and jibed: "this is for the books."

In 1948, nobody was hurt, apart from some editors and the publisher of the Chicago Tribune whose professional pride was badly dented. In Sago, the families of 12 miners were brought through a process of unimaginable pain, being told first that their loved ones had survived being trapped under the surface for 41 hours – only to learn three hours later that the men had been found dead by the rescue teams.

The sense of euphoria, followed by devastation, was not confined to the district around Sago. The nation had responded to the plight of the miners, trapped when an explosion blocked their access to the surface. Prayer meetings and services were held in many locations, notably throughout the many other mining communities in West Virginia and elsewhere.

It is only fair to acknowledge that the news media were not the only guilty party in disseminating information that turned out to be tragically wrong. Indeed, they did not initiate the process. But they failed in their professional duty to verify important information before putting it into the public domain. Families, fellow-workers and friends may be susceptible to wishful thinking and may seize on wished-for "news". But news professionals are expected to be more exacting and to publish only what they can verify.

Media chiefs were quick to pass the blame back to state officials and to sources within the mining company. Information was seeping out from the rescue team, through the surface control centre, which was at worst incorrect and at best imperfectly understood. In turn, it was being relayed by mobile telephone, by e-mail and by word-of-mouth. One of the most shocking aspects of the affair, however, was that although senior officials of the company knew within 20 minutes that the wrong information had gone out, it was almost three hours later before the unfortunate families were given the correct and heartbreaking news that their men-folk were dead.

Once the false "good news" began to circulate among the rescue workers and the mining community, it was taken up by the news media. The moment it became broadcast news it acquired authority and force. A self-reinforcing cycle of certainty grew up – based on nothing.

The news professionals failed. The state authorities and the mining company also failed in not putting an effective communications and media policy in place. The phenomenon of news leakage, in particular via the cell-phone system, has been long identified by communications practitioners and effective strategies have been devised to overcome it. No information should have come from the surface rescue control centre that was not controlled and verified by those in charge.

Some editors were more cautious than others. The New York Times website raised no doubts, heading its report "12 miners found alive 41 hours after explosion." But the print edition headline read, "12 miners are found alive, family members say." An Associated Press (AP) dispatch attributed the rescue news to families and friends. But AP later hardened its story, dropping the sources. The unfortunate Chicago Tribune repeated its 1948 performance and reported the men as rescued. Even the Washington Post carried a front-page story declaring "A dozen miners were ... found alive Tuesday night."

Newspaper ombudsmen across the US took thousands of complaints from angry readers. Many – and their editors – simply put their hands up and pleaded guilty.

Sherry Chisenhall, editor of The Eagle in Wichita, Kansas, for example, told her readers: "If you saw today's printed edition of The Eagle you saw a front page story and a headline that are flat wrong ... we violated a basic tenet of journalism today in our printed edition: report what you know and how you know it."

For Irish journalists and readers there will be resonances of the Liam Lawlor case in all of this. There are many common elements. Journalists universally now work against ever more demanding deadlines. Improved communications technologies, which should theoretically make for more accurate news reporting, more often shorten the time within which verification and fact-checking should take place. Were instantaneous communications not available on that Tuesday night in West Virgina, it is likely that many of the news media would have had to run with a 'holding story', in turn, sparing many of those awaiting news the additional pain they have had to endure.

As with the Liam Lawlor case, some journalists have sought to defend themselves or mitigate their failure by claiming that they had cited official sources.

Scott Libin, a faculty member at the Poynter Institute, probably the most prestigious centre for journalism studies in the US, wrote in Editor & Publisher:

"Even when plausible reliable sources such as police or officials pass along information, journalists should press for key details ... if we believe that when your Mama says she loves you, you should check it out, surely what the mayor or police chief or governor says deserves at least some healthy scepticism and verification."

Conor Brady is Editor Emeritus of the Irish Times. He is a senior teaching fellow at the UCD Graduate School of Business where he lectures in modern media