By Reid Collins on 1.5.06 @ 12:09AM
The tragedy of West Virginia supplied several instructions.
The tragedy of West Virginia supplied several instructions.
America learned, for example, that newspapers do indeed have
deadlines -- times certain when the presses must roll. And that cub
reporter who races into the city room crying, "Stop the presses!"
is for movies only. Thus, the generic front-page banner, "12
SURVIVE!" is being archived in journalism's cabinet along with the
moldering "Dewey Beats Truman" page.
Critics complain of a lack of attribution, which is precisely
what a headline is meant to lack. "White Star Lines Alleges
'Titanic' Sinks," will not do. And the subject matter of the West
Virginia story -- life and death -- does not admit of variable
adverbs. The hour of its telling contributed to the colossal error
as well as did the geography of the scene, an above-ground jigsaw
designed for disaster.
The mine rescue teams communicated through purifying masks by
radio with a pure air station and the command center, the latter
above ground, near the mine head. The command center was commanded
by three elements, federal and state mine safety officials and
International Coal, the mine's owner-operator, represented by the
Dickensian-named Ben Hatfield. Down the road a good distance was a
Baptist Church, set aside for the families of the missing. But they
apparently had no direct communication with the Command Center,
relying instead on envoys from the center or on rumors circulated
partly at least by cellphone word of what some were able to learn
by listening to the mine rescue team's coded radio communication.
We are told that the code word for dead body was "item." The rescue
team's discovery of one "item" reached the Command Center after a
confused message had indicated 12 "alive" a few minutes to
midnight.
Somehow the alleged discovery of a dozen living men was
communicated to the families at the church, setting off hymn and
prayer. This was duly picked up by the press some distance away and
became the basis for the rejoicing headlines. The governor of the
state got the word and raced to the scene, to bear-hug Hatfield in
the command center parking lot. But there was confusing word. In
addition to a deceased man, rescuers had found a living miner who
would turn out to be the sole survivor, Randy McCloy. They were
respiring him and bringing him out. But he seemed to be the only
one.
Hatfield began to worry. At 1:20 a.m. the mine rescue team
reached the surface. Hatfield says he sent the State Police down to
the church to tell the clergy to tell the revelers there was
confusion, to restrain their celebration. There seems no record of
the message getting through. At 2:15 the lone survivor was ID'd as
McCloy. And the command center sent word to the church where the
joyful noise unto the Lord was swiftly shifted to wrathful shouts
against the bearers of bad news. By this time it was 3 a. m. and
the major presses of the east had rolled and many unaffiliated
television stations were left with useless happy "overnight" pieces
to tide them over. Cable, however, shined.
There is another, more subtle instruction in the disaster. The
lesson of how labor in America has changed, and how few men now
earn their living wrestling with the earth, extracting goods from
it, lifting against its gravity, daring its awesome retaliatory
powers. The declining number of Americans killed annually on the
job tells this story, but antiseptically. The West Virginia miners,
and now their mourners, tell it graphically.
They are a rare breed, becoming more so.
As rare as that prescient managing editor who commands: "Stop
the presses."
topics:
Television, Movies
