In Utah Mining Disaster, Life Imitates Art

The reporter predicts that Americans will become obsessed with the story, which they do. But the framing of the story around one individual’s sad plight leads them to ignore more important issues---as has now occurred in the real media world, as the Utah mine owner’s history of safety violations, and the Bush Administration’s opposition to tough mine safety laws, becomes a sidebar to the human tragedy.

The almost certain death of six miners trapped since August 6 should have raised a national debate about the industry’s unnecessarily high fatality rate. But as director Billy Wilder showed over fifty years ago, the media is more concerned with extracting emotion over the trapped miners than with demanding answers from government officials.

Early in Wilder’s “Ace in the Hole,” veteran reporter Kirk Douglas tells a young colleague that nothing grabs the public more than a mine cave-in. When he comes across an Indian artifacts hunter trapped by a cave-in, Douglas sees breaking the story as his chance to get out of New Mexico and back on top of the New York City newspaper world.

Unfortunately, the movie’s key plot device----Douglas convinces the locals that they should use a method that takes a week to get the man out rather than a day, as that will give him a week of national headlines---runs into problems as the film continues. But among Wilder’s essential messages is how the local corruption responsible for the delayed recovery effort is ignored amidst the public hullabaloo---which even includes the opening of a huge carnival at the site of the cave-in.

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