Sick news from West Virginia

As anyone who's tried to watch the news knows, there was a mine explosion in West Virginia and a dozen miners were trapped. Needless to say, all the cable news shows jetted their stars to the scene and treated us to endless hours of absolutely banal and ridiculous stammering and useless interviews and attempts to describe the scene.

One miner was reported to have died, but the families of these miners had been euphoric only an hour or so before after hearing reports saying that all of the remaining 12 were alive. The company neither confirmed nor denied this, and said nothing for over an hour, before dashing these families misplaced joy by announcing that all but one had been found dead.

The CEO of the mining company, Ben Hatfield, just appeared at a press conference and I've never seen such blatant show of insensitivity and immorality for some time.

After expressing his regret, and saying, "welcome to the worst day of my life", (poor baby) the CEO was asked a question about how the company was going to handle this, and rather than explain what they planned to do to help support the families and community in their grief, the guy launched into this statement which sounded like something they'd sent out with their annual report.

He stated that the company was "fiscally solvent" or something to the effect that they had lots of cash on hand, and was poised for "continued growth". He made a point of the fact that this mine was only one small part of the company (as if it were inconsequential) and they expected to continue making excellent profits in the future.

In other words, as far as the company was concerned, this was nothing, or at least they're anxious for Wall St. to think so. It was clear that many people had been thinking ONLY of what this meant for their bottom line, without a thought about the loss of life.

Then when another reporter tried to get him to at least think of the miners, he made a remark about how "tough" these workers were, that they were "used to hardship" and suggested that they'd come right back, seeing as they enjoy "the work", and their good wages and health benefits. Just stunning.

He also hastened to say that years ago, this sort of thing was a common occurance, and now they're not. Not much of a comfort, somehow.

I realize that a company is always concerned with protecting it's stock price and image, but this statement was just sickening, given that it was spoken only seconds after he had just announced that 12 of their workers had just been killed. How could he even be thinking about putting out company PR crap at a time like this?

But without skipping a beat, he went from announcing the deaths into a financial report for the company, dismissed the importance of this mine in their scheme of things, and went on to confidently state that they'd make even more profits in the future, and that the miners would come back because they were "tough" and loved their wages and health benefits.

It was as if he was saying, "Yeah, they're dead, and that's a shame. But the message I've been sent here to give is that we're in great financial shape and the miners all love the wages and health benefits we provide. They're just dumb, tough hillbillies and they're desperate. They'll come back because we're the only game in town. No need to worry. This tragedy is just a minor speed bump to the corporation, which of course is more important."

An amazing, and rather disgusting glimpse into the souless and greedy corporate mindset.

Family members of the miners are now telling of how Hatfield came to the church and announced to the families that all but one of the miners were alive and giving a rabble rousing speech about how he was going to go get the rest and bring them directly to their families at the church. He said he would return in an hour. As one woman noted, the guy had probably never been underground in his life.

After 3 hours had passed, he returned and told them that they were all dead.

Hatfield admits he knew within 20 minutes of the first reports that he had mislead the families, but didn't tell them anything for over an hour. He said he didn't know whether all were dead or only some, and didn't want to tell the families anything until he was sure.

He blames the episode on "miscommunication".

He went to the church trying to be a hero, assured them he'd go bring them all out alive, just bullshitting them, causing them all to rejoice and start singing in joy, even when he had no idea if they were alive or not.

A woman who had just fled the church with her two children after violence errupted told Anderson Cooper that when Hatfield made the announcement at the church that only one miner survived, the church errupted with people screaming "liar" and "hypocrite" at Hatfield and there was extreme anger ant that many family members tried to psysically attack Hatfield and were fighting cops who were trying to protect him.

The guy should be horsewhipped and run out of town.

Newspapers rushed to sensationalize this story already published editions with scraming headlines reading "ALIVE!" complete with pictures of the jubilant families.

These families have been horribly treated, and were subjected to many conficting reports, including that one man was saved and another possibly survived, but no news about the other ten. And they've also been told that all the miners are dead, but they can't find them, leaving the families wondering how they know that they're dead.

A sad, sad, situation, compounded by horrible communication and misinformation.

Here is a link to a page where you can see many of the false headlines from a variety of papers.