Searching for a Miracle:

Media Coverage of the Sago Mine Disaster

Feb 13 at 7:30pm · Mountainlair Ballroom

On January 2, 2006, an explosion in the Sago Mine in Tallmansville, West Virginia, trapped 13 miners and began a two-day rescue mission to find and save them. In one of the most controversial media accounts of the twenty-first century, newspapers, radio, and television reported just before midnight on January 3 that 12 of the 13 miners had survived. National news broadcasters documented the families' euphoria. Newspaper headlines throughout the country sang out in large black letters on their front pages the next morning that all 12 miners had survived.

In the end, only one miner, 27-year-old Randal McCloy Jr., lived, and the Sago explosion became the worst mining disaster in the U.S. since a 2001 explosion in Alabama killed 13 and the worst in West Virginia since the 1968 Farmington Mine disaster in Marion County took 78 lives.

But for three hours, family members and the country believed there had been another miracle in the mines, much like the July 2002 rescue of nine miners from the flooded Quecreek Mine in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. When the news of the miners' deaths came at 3:00 a.m., family members were shocked and angered, and a nation questioned why they were told the miners were alive. Some newspapers and radio and television stations apologized, while others said they reported what they were told.

During this panel discussion, CNN's Randi Kaye; CBS' Sharyn Alfonsi and Mike Solmsen; USA Today's Mark Memmott, the Charleston Gazette's Scott Finn, the New York Daily News' Derek Rose, and the Poynter Institute's Kelly McBride will discuss media coverage of the Sago Mine Disaster, the ethical implications of the crisis coverage, and the lessons learned. They will also discuss the role the 24-hour news cycle played in one of the biggest media faux pas of the century. This presentation, coordinated by the Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism, will be covered in its entirety by C-SPAN cable network.