I decided to let a bit of the edge of this weeks events calm down before posting. First let me say that I have all of the sympathy in the world for the miners families and I hope that the one remaining miner will continue his recovery. With those things said I find it interesting in this day and age of instant information that it is so easy to get it wrong. Before I went to bed on Tuesday I had heard that they had found the miners alive and yet only one ambulance left the scene. This puzzled me as time went by and I went to bed thinking I am not so sure that all of them are alive. I listened to NPR the next morning and heard that truly only one was alive and the families were struggling because only hours earlier they had been told they were alive. Maybe it is human nature that we seek hope in our deepest hours of despair, but why do we lead with that on the news? Even today CNN has the post from that evening still up. I just did a Google search and it was 5th on the list. The hardest thing is reading the paper and just like the Dewey wins headline there it was the next morning "Trapped Miners Found Alive". I guess if I am trying to make a point with this it is that local media should concentrate on what is around them. There are true journalistic stories waiting to be told, but aren't. Today's information society also owes something to checking facts and just because some family member hears it from someone else and then tells CNN that it is true shouldn't we make sure that it is true?
Okay stepping off my soap box now. Any thoughts?
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