Manning Pynn
Newspaper owed readers apology
Published January 8, 2006
The Sentinel apologized on Thursday's front page for a headline and article in that space the day before, quoting relatives of 13 trapped West Virginia coal miners as saying, "They're alive!"
All but one of the miners, it later turned out, were not alive.
S. Atticum of Longwood, among others, found the apology unnecessary. "Your readers readily understand how upstream sources can get it wrong occasionally in their haste to be first," he wrote, "and how local media end up with egg on their faces."
Atticum's generous comment was much appreciated, but the newspaper owed its readers that apology -- not because it generated, or even contributed to generating, the incorrect information. The apology was for delivering to readers information that misled them in a very prominent way about a very emotional issue.
The Sentinel, of course, wasn't alone in reporting incorrectly that all but one of the miners had survived.
Anyone who went from watching the end of the Orange Bowl game early Wednesday to any of several cable-television news programs, as I did, could have seen more than 90 minutes of repetitive reporting of the rescue -- but just one ambulance leaving the mine.
That sort of inconsistency normally raises questions in journalists' minds. In this case -- perhaps because the governor spoke of a miracle as if it had occurred, perhaps because presses were rolling, perhaps because they just wanted to believe -- it didn't.
Consequently, newspapers nationwide -- most of which, like the Sentinel, were depending on wire-service reports -- ended up misinforming their readers.
The press run was over before the Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C., learned at 3 a.m. that its "12 miners found alive" headline was wrong.
Newspapers in the Midwest had an additional hour to discover and correct the problem. The Chicago Tribune -- which, like the Sentinel, is part of Tribune Co. -- was able to stop its presses and change "12 miners saved" to "Mine rescue tragedy." The Kansas City Star did similarly, catching about 10 percent of its newspapers and pulling back about 20,000 that had not yet left the newspaper's loading docks.
Farther west, publications benefited from the time differential.
About 30,000 copies of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer told readers: "12 W.Va. miners found alive," but the press was stopped, and that was changed to "MINERS' SHOCKING END." Glenn Drosendahl, that newspaper's reader representative, acknowledged, "We on the West Coast were fortunate to have time on our side."
In Orlando, after capitalizing on a late, Orange Bowl deadline to update the mine saga, Sentinel News Production Editor Steve Harmon "checked the wires, took a last glance at the cable news and then logged off at about 2:35 a.m.," he recounted. "I pulled into my driveway just before 3 a.m. when an ABC News guy breaks into programming and says there is some confusion regarding the status of the miners."
He called the press supervisor, Joe Lopez, and learned that the run had just finished. Harmon then awoke Editor Charlotte Hall, and the two concluded that it was too late to call back the delivery trucks, round up design and editing crews, and print and deliver a corrected edition. Hall instead asked Harmon to alert Anthony Moor, who edits the Sentinel's Web site, of the urgency to update orlan dosentinel.com immediately, which he did.
As reader Atticum suggested, Sentinel editors tried diligently to provide readers with accurate information. When information changes after all copies have been printed and sent out for delivery, though, the newspaper is at a disadvantage it cannot overcome.
In this case, that disadvantage caused readers to be badly misinformed. For that the newspaper rightfully is sorry.
Manning Pynn can be reached at or 407-650-6410.