Miners Dead: Quoting The Critics

> Joanne Ostrow, Denver Post: “TV news people tossing around the word ‘miracle’ is bad enough. Proclaiming a miracle with no verification is a travesty. Media credibility took another hit this week. Both electronic and print news outlets stumbled badly late Tuesday and early Wednesday with an emotionally charged factual error that was not corrected for three hours.”

> “The question that a lot of journalists probably wish had been asked of the governor is, ‘How do you know that?'” former Philadelphia Inquirer managing editor Butch Ward, senior fellow at the Poynter Institute, tells Knight Ridder. “The national press corps is asking it more often to officials in Washington and being called arrogant for asking. But it’s an important question to ask.”

> Rush Limbaugh today: “Time and again they report false information and spin. They rely on rumored sources. Somebody shouts out a rumor, they run with it. They take it to the air. The new standard in the media is: a guy runs up and tells you something, you don’t know who your sources are. You don’t know your source’s name. You don’t know anything about him but you report it as news, and then when it’s all proven to be untrue. You get, ‘Oh, how awful,’ but there’s never any official taking of responsibility. there’s never any accountability.”

> Andrew Tyndall on the Reuters wire: “The only reason these sorts of stories get the amount of coverage that they do in the first place is that everyone is rooting for a happy ending. People let their optimism for a good headline get in the way of the … facts.”