Ales Rarus

"The scare tactics, poor reporting and lack of reputable sources came to a sad and tragic climax this week as we news junkies watched. The horror of a West Virginia mining disaster was brought into homes coast to coast and there was no shortage of misinformation. Thirteen miners had been trapped by an explosion and cave in deep within a coal mine near Buchannon. As the first dead body was recovered, Fox News Channel reported that no one knew the cause of death, as yet, but assured we viewers that they would have that information, first. Hosts Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes then badgered a Red Cross volunteer live, worldwide, demanding the woman give them an opinion about whether it would be 'better' if the dead man was found to have 'suffocated from carbon monoxide inhalation? or had been ?crushed to death by the cave in'. Luckily, the volunteer kept her head, and rather than give an uninformed guess (the basis for most television news), she informed Hannity three times that she could not possibly give him an answer. She'd never been to a mining accident site, she explained, and the Red Cross' job was to comfort the families of the victims, not to perform autopsies."

"It was hard for Sean to mask his disappointment."

"Meanwhile, over on CNN, Anderson Cooper was getting to the core of the story by interviewing an anonymous teenaged girl who had talked to somebody who had stood next to a meeting between the trapped men's families and the coal company. The meeting, held in a nearby church, was off-limits to the press (smart move, families). That didn't stop CNN. They found this little girl who had talked to somebody who overheard what was going on in that meeting. And with this one twice-removed completely unreliable source, they hit the air live, worldwide, to inform the awaiting viewing public about the latest developments. "

Read more of what Scott Paulsen has to say.