Nation’s news media rush was biggest disaster of them all.

The priorities and practices of the nation’s commercial news media will be high atop this year’s public agenda after TV stations, web sites and newspapers everywhere rushed to report that the 12 West Virginia coal miners had been found alive and safe.  They were, of course, tragically wrong.

Trade magazine Editor & Publisher called it “one of the most disturbing and disgraceful media performances of this type in recent years.”

Disturbing and disgraceful.  Not only because of the completely unnecessary grief and anguish that the news media added to families and friends of the dead miners, but because it was so obvious that the story wasn’t right.   Media consumers sensed an uncomfortable disconnect as happy images and interviews of ecstatic relatives were casually, tepidly caveated by acknowledgement that there was no word from the mining company or rescue teams.

I suspect that many Americans were not surprised to wake up and find the miraculous relief reported late last night had all been a big “miscommunication.” 

The sad episode was then compounded this morning in millions of driveways, coffee shops and offices, as people who now knew that the miners were dead shook their heads at the bold headlines of their daily newspapers, which shouted that the men were alive.

Look.  There is no question that International Coal Group violated every standard of crises management.  The company’s lack of preparedness and incompetence in managing communications both within and outside the unfolding tragedy will unfortunately be studied by PR and management executives for decades to come. 

But much of that lesson will focus on the increasingly understood possibility that competing news interests will run with miraculous but unconfirmed headlines like a raging herd of snorting, blind buffalo.