US media sheds crocodile tears for West Virginia miners

by wsws (reposted)

Mon, Jan 9, 2006 10:27PM

The US media coverage of the West Virginia mine disaster has been a spectacle of ignorance, condescension and chasing higher circulation. Unburdened with any serious knowledge of the lives of coal miners or their history, scores of highly paid, highly coiffed journalists from the cable and network news channels and print media produced little but the most superficial explanations of the tragedy and its background.

In the hundreds of hours of television news coverage and reams of news articles, nothing could be found that enlightened the worldwide audience following the gripping events as to the Sago Mine disaster’s social and historical dimensions.

Indeed it generally takes such a tragedy for the US media to discover there is a working class at all. This was all but acknowledged by the editors of the New York Times, who commented, “Just as Hurricane Katrina forced Americans to look at the face of lingering poverty and racism, this mining tragedy should focus us all on another forgotten, mistreated corner of society.”

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/mine-j10.shtml

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