Changing times work against good reporting

By Dawn Miller
Charleston Gazette
Sometimes, I miss reporting. Not last week.
Aside from the tragedy of the 12 miners who died at Sago in Upshur County, W.Va., and aside from the compounded grief of their families, good reporting is increasingly difficult these days.
You'd think it would be easier than ever. We can beam information around like Star Trek characters. Our tools are more portable, more durable and more powerful. There is more data available 24 hours a day and more ways to access it.
But there is a dark side to these advances. The twin culprits of television and the Internet, for all their wondrous applications, come with a price. They have taught us that we are entitled to instant gratification.
Instant gratification is the enemy of sound newsgathering. Yet instant gratification is the defining characteristic of both TV and the Web. Our technology and marketing have created a 24-hour vacuum for news. Our society fills most of it with inane chatter, so much "news-flavored product," punctuated by live reports from unfolding tragedies. This type of coverage is cheap to produce, and repeating it all day makes it cheaper still.
Whenever tragedy occurs, dozens of satellite trucks and people with Borg-like electrical appendages tear onto the scene and alter it. The worst of them ask ill-informed or insensitive questions. They give everyone a bad name.
A few reporters can visit and interact in a civilized way. But a media horde ceases to be human. It becomes a pushy, unruly animal. People are understandably repulsed. They push back. The State Police cordons off the beast, sometimes for safety, sometimes for privacy, sometimes for secrecy, but never with good results. All reporters are herded together, the good with the bad. When you're standing around in a pack in the cold trying to find the news and report it, it's very easy to develop a pack mentality, something I see in too many reporters. Everyone is too eager to report the same thing. Better first than second, I tell young reporters, but better slow than wrong.
Herd instinct
But for all the things wrong with the media, last week's heartbreakingly mistaken report that 12 miners were alive is not one of them. Had reporters at the scene been allowed to do their jobs properly, the coverage would have been much different, and the families would have been spared at least some grief. Instead, reporters were herded about in hopes of minimizing their damage.
Understandable as this tendency is, it also robs the press of its ability to be a public servant. You can physically see information spread through a crowd. It creates a visible wave of altered facial expressions and posture. You can track the message like a weather front. Having watched this wildfire spread, Charleston Gazette reporter Dave Gustafson searched for someone in a position to have seen those miners or know their status, but those officials were not answering questions. Meanwhile, the governor was convinced. U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration officials contacted both West Virginia senators' offices to convey the erroneous report.
Gazette staffers hastily remade the paper and waited up expecting an official announcement. Dedicated staff, including those whose names and pictures you never see in the paper, remade the pages a second time when the horrible correction finally came, so that most of our local subscribers received the accurate news.
The Internet, cheap digital photography and cell phones leave people with the impression that newsgathering is something anyone can do. It is true that anyone can work the equipment. But as it turns out, not just anyone with a cell phone is competent to report the news. Not just any anxious relative can do it, either. Not just any governor can do it.
Had professional news reporters been allowed access to those in contact with the rescuers, I doubt that the families would have suffered the added torture they felt last Wednesday morning. Allowed access to the source, Gustafson wouldn't have garbled the message. Nor would the AP's Allen G. Breed. Even Anderson Cooper would have gotten it right, but he would have had to turn the camera off for a while and spend some time reporting.
Too much, too little
Ironically, people in Upshur County suffered from too much media and too little media simultaneously. There were too many Geraldos strutting about jabbing mikes into the faces of suffering families. But no legitimate reporters could get close enough to the action to report the facts for the benefit of all.
Everyone here is sorry for the erroneous edition, but no one can find anything they would have done differently in the same circumstances. That's small comfort, to us as well as for readers. As long as our society views the news media as some sort of beast that needs to be penned -- and as long as the most visible news media deserve that treatment -- such failures will continue.
X Dawn Miller is an editorial writer for the Charleston Gazette in Charleston, W.Va. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.