Miners Dead: Scrambling To Cover “Dramatic Reversal” In The Dead Of Night

CBS Public Eye has an interesting tick-tock of the miner news:
“Around 3:00, reports that the story had made a dramatic reversal were coming in to Bob Bicknell, the Executive Producer of Up To The Minute, CBS’s overnight news broadcast. Up To The Minute does 8 minute newsblocks at the top and bottom of every hour. If there’s no new news in a story, they often rerun the newsblock from the previous hour. That was their plan for the 3:00 newsblock – to rerun correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi‘s report from 2:00. At around 2:59:45, Bicknell says, he was on the phone with producers and the national desk to try to confirm that previous reports were wrong, and that the twelve miners were in fact dead. He couldn’t confirm in time, however, and so Up To The Minute reran the 2:00 newblock. About two minutes in, however, Bicknell says ‘we interrupted ourselves on tape’- breaking into a report on what had been deemed a ‘miracle’ – for a live interview with Alfonsi, who relayed the tragic news.”