MIRACLE IN WEST VIRGINIA

Just because a group of stunned family members stream out of a Baptist church in Appalachia crying, "hallelujah" and singing "How Great Thou Art," does not mean a "miracle" has happened, but the Associated Press, Cox News Service, the Washington Post and many other news outlets claimed that 12 miners feared dead had been rescued based on nothing more than a rumor that had spread at a church gathering in West Virginia.
This will lead tomorrow to corrections in virtually every newspaper in the country.
The Associated Press, in particular, should have known that you're not out of a mining disaster until you are out of the mine -- alive.
The Associated Press has a reputation for accurately counting bodies. There is a grim reminder daily in the listing of casualties in the Iraq war, compiled by the AP. Today's list shows "at least 2,183 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003," according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which adds, "The AP count is three more than the Defense Department tally, last updated Tuesday morning." When it comes to the AP versus the Defense Department, I'll trust the AP's numbers any day. But something went very wrong in the mine disaster story. The phenomenon is politely known as the mass delusions of crowds, and journalists of Associated Press caliber are supposed to be wary of sourcing stories based on hearsay. Of course, it doesn't help when the Governor calls for divine intervention.
MIRACULOUS JOURNALISM
The Governor of West Virginia, Joe Manchin III, urged the residents of the state to "believe in miracles."
"Miracles" have no place in journalism, especially when they do not come true. Governors have no place spreading false information and rumors when a natural disaster hits their states.
Let us hope that in the tragic event a natural disaster occurs in Wisconsin Governor Doyle will receive his information from official sources, rather than from a pipeline from God, and that the news media will base their stories on facts, rather than the fictions that can too easily spread in a fundamentalist rural congregation where desperate relatives had comforted each other for 41 hours.
Could you imagine an AP science reporter writing a story on "intellegent design" based only on the information available from the pulpit of the Sago Baptist Church? Well, this is far more tragic. -- Michael Horne