Mike Eli writes about the mine blast at Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine: "I have (as you can imagine) watched the coverage of Upper Big Branch closely... But if you had sat alongside me listening to those news report, you would not have known what every single miner in southern West Virginia knows: Massey was the national flagship of union breaking.

"Until the 1980s, southern West Virginia was the heartland of the United Mine Workers. It was unthinkable that a non-union mine could operate there (as they did in the fringes of the coalfields, in Harlan county Kentucky or in the far West). But as the combination of government, police, strip mining and exhaustion broke the miners’ movement of the 1970 , Massey dared to open a mining complex in Raleigh County, in the heart of the UMWA’s stronghold.

"Look at the news coverage. Think about what it took to avoid reporting this simple history of Massey’s militant anti-unionism. Think of how many people told each news reporter that Massey was hated as a spearhead of de-unionization. Think of how decisions had to be made in the news organizations NOT to feature that fact, or draw the simple conclusions."

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