ABC News team in bomb attack

ABC News co-anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman Doug Vogt have reportedly been evacuated to the Army's Landstuhl medical center in Germany where they are being treated for serious injuries after being injured by a roadside bomb attack in Iraq. (Read the Reuters report here, posted at 12 p.m. ET.)

This latest attack is a little-needed reminder of the constant danger faced by journalists in Iraq. According to the International News Safety Institute, "A total of 101 journalists and support staff from 16 countries have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, making it the bloodiest conflict in history for the news media." The number of wounded is uncertain, however. In a press release, INSI director Rodney Pinder said: "These brave journalists and their news teams daily risk all so that we can know the truth about Iraq."

By all accounts (Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, Associated Press) Woodruff and Vogt are experienced war correspondents and took extensive safety precautions. But, as LA Times reporter Alissa Rubin wrote last week:

The truth is that we are working in a war zone where no rules apply. No one is safe: not Iraqis, not Westerners, not men, not women.

And, as NBC News correspondent Martin Fletcher said at Poynter Online yesterday: "Staying safe in a war zone has nothing to do with experience, it's just dumb luck."

In Iraq: "No one is safe"

In the Los Angeles Times, reporter Alissa J. Rubin describes how she has started to reexamine the risks she takes in her reporting in Iraq after the kidnapping of Jill Carroll. She writes:

When Jill Carroll was kidnapped, other journalists in Iraq were aghast that something so horrible had happened to someone they knew. But many insisted privately that it never would have happened to them.

They would have traveled in an armored car. They would have taken two vehicles so the second, the chase car, could have scared off the gunmen. They never would have gone to that neighborhood.

Maybe, maybe not. You could avoid western Baghdad, where she was abducted, only to be nabbed in the southern district. You could have two cars and the second could have its tires shot out and careen off the road. You could be in an armored car and your driver could lose his nerve.

The truth is that we are working in a war zone where no rules apply. No one is safe: not Iraqis, not Westerners, not men, not women.

Rubin took part in an October 2005 gathering of war reporters that was organized by the Dart Society. (Read about it here.)

Also: At CJR Daily, Paul McLeary has filed his latest dispatch about being an embedded reporter in Iraq.

Jill Carroll update

Two-and-a-half weeks after she was kidnapped, and four days after a deadline set by her captors, the fate of American journalist Jill Carroll remains unknown.

On its website, The Christian Science Monitor is maintaining a "Jill Carroll update" page with daily newsbriefs and links to stories about Carroll, who is a freelance reporter for the paper.

In the past few days, Editor and Publisher has posted several stories related to Carroll's kidnapping:

• A remembrance by Karen List, who taught Carroll at the University of Massachusetts Journalism program.
• A tribute to Carroll by reporter Dennis Anderson.
• Today, E&P posted a story about Military Reporters and Editors president Sig Christenson's call "for a new agreement among news outlets to hold off reporting on any overseas abduction for 48 hours."

In USA Today several reporters, including Farnaz Fassihi of The Wall Street Journal, dicuss dealing with the threat of kidnapping while working in Iraq. Carroll's abduction was also a topic on Sunday's edition of "Reliable Sources" on CNN (transcript).

Free Press series tells tragic story

On Oct. 2, 2005, 20 senior citizens were killed when a tour boat capsized in Lake George, N.Y. Of the 20 dead, 19 hailed from Michigan. Last week, the Detroit Free Press ran a 5-part series about the tragedy by reporter Jeff Seidel (writer of the 2005 Dart Award-winning series "Homicide in Detroit").

Concern, controversy over kidnapping

Christian Science Monitor stringer Jill Carroll is at least the 36th journalist kidnapped in Iraq since April 2004, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Carroll was abducted on January 7. Her Iraqi translator was killed in the attack.

During the past few days, several observers have raised ethical questions about the 48-hour news blackout requested by the CSM. Most major media outlets complied with the request and did not publish Carroll's name until late January 9.

Slate's Jack Shafer (echoing similar questions from E&P's Greg Mitchell and Military Reporters and Editors president Sig Christenson) writes:

I know it's easy for me to meditate about this topic from the safety of my Washington office while journalists labor under the threat of death every day in Iraq. But the questions remain. If the press should spike news to help a colleague, how long an interval is decent? Should it be 48 hours, as in Carroll's case? Until the local press reports the story? Until the abducted person's employer confirms the news? Until the U.S. Embassy does? Or until the kidnappers make their announcement on the Web? I don't have any easy answers, just easy questions.

It's also not clear to me whether the same set of reportorial rules currently applies to the kidnapping coverage of foreign journalists and to non-journalist foreigners in Iraq. It would be very bad news—pardon the pun—if reporters are more vigilant in protecting their own than they are non-journalists.

More on mine accident

A week after the tragedy, discussion about how the W.Va. mine accident was covered continues ...

New York Daily News reporter Derek Rose writes on his blog about covering the story, and the controversy over the media's handling of false rescue reports.

And where are the other miners, we wonder? It must be 2 a.m. or so by now, about two hours since the families first got their update. They are probably being treated and triaged at the scene, we figure.

As it gets later and later, we’re realizing something is wrong. But I don’t think any of us ever thought the other 11 miners were dead. I certainly didn’t.

Charleston, W.Va., Gazette reporter Scott Finn also has written a first-person account in which he criticizes pack journalism:

As individuals, I think we all wanted the same thing — to tell the trapped miners’ stories, to give them a proper tribute, and to let their families know the whole world was with them.

As a group, we were often rude, pushy and inconsiderate. Maybe there’s no other way. But that doesn’t make it right.

Also, NPR ombudsman Jeffrey A. Dvorkin takes a close look at how his network handled the crisis:

Stories such as this one, where information from the site is either lacking or largely hearsay, represents a challenge to any news organization. The pressure to move the story to its conclusion is enormous. It takes experience, acumen, patience and courage to tell one's editor to back off until the facts are verified.

From the evidence in hand, NPR did not overcome many of these obstacles in its breaking coverage of this story.

Suicide photos draw protest

In London yesterday, the Times and Evening Standard each published photos of a woman as she jumped to her death from a hotel balcony. The two papers have been criticized for the decision.

Mike Jempson, director of the UK's MediaWise Trust, issued a statement calling the publication of the photos "irresponsible and reprehensible." He added:

The 'suicide leap' pictures should not have been published. Evidence from reputable studies conducted over many years indicates the risk of copycat behaviour when this type of coverage occurs.

MediaWise has produced guidelines about reporting of suicide based on extensive consultations with mental health and suicide prevention agencies, the National Union of Journalists' Ethics Council, and the International Federation of Journalists.

David King, the chief executive of Samaritans, a UK charity that supports suicidally depressed people, has also protested the suicide photos. The Samaritans have issued their own guidelines for media coverage of suicide.

The Dart Center also has a tipsheet for covering suicide.

The cost of mining

Thanks to safety advances in recent decades, multi-fatality mine accidents have become more and more uncommon in the U.S. That's part of the reason the tragedy in West Virginia has gotten so much attention in the press.

Since these tragedies are so rare, it's easy to forget that many of the tools and gadgets that we use and rely upon daily contain materials that were once under the ground—materials that were retrieved by humans working in dangerous conditions.

In 2004, according to statistics from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), mine accidents caused 55 deaths in the U.S. That's the lowest number on record—less than half the total in 1991, and about a quarter of the total in 1984. In 1931, more than 1,600 miners were killed on the job in the U.S.

In some areas of the world, however, mining hasn't gotten much safer. In China, more than 6,000 miners were killed last year—more than 16 per day. (Click here for a recent BBC story about the Chinese government's efforts to reign-in mine operators.) A November 2005 accident at Dongfeng mine, Heilongjiang, left 171 dead. In February 2005, 210 died in Sunjiawan mine, Liaoning province.

Local paper gets mine story right

Becky Wagoner, a reporter at the Elkins, W.Va., Inter-Mountain newspaper, was skeptical about rumors that 12 miners had been rescued. Though the rumors were being reported as fact by national outlets, Wagoner had not seen any official confirmation, and since her deadline was many hours away (the Inter-Mountain is an afternoon paper), she decided to bide her time until the story checked out.

This afternoon, Wagoner spoke with E&P's Joe Strupp:

"A lot of the media left to go to the church where family members were located, but I stayed put because this was where every official news conference was given--and we never got anything official here," she said. "Something was not right. Then we were hearing reports that 12 ambulances had gone in [to the mine area] but only one was coming out. There was so much hype that no one considered the fact that there was no [official] update."

Strupp also spoke with Linda Skidmore, the editor of the Inter-Mountain (circ. 11,000). Strupp writes:

The editor noted that part of her skepticism about the miracle rescue stemmed from a history in the area of people passing on information they believe to be true with little or no sourcing. "We get a lot of people here who sometimes believe they have an inside story because they hear it on a police scanner or listen to a conversation," Skidmore said. "We know to be cautious of those situations."

Even if she had run a morning paper, Skidmore said she believes she would have held off running the story, pointing out that she did not put any of the bogus reports on the paper's Web site. She said the national press were likely victims of being outsiders and wanting to break good news.

"I think part of it is not knowing the area and seeing the families celebrating," she added. "That is sometimes enough verification for people. I would still want someone to say it is correct."

False news reports add to confusion

For about three hours late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, news media reported that all but one of the 13 trapped W.Va. miners had somehow survived. But then officials revealed that all but one had, in fact, been killed.

From just before midnight until about 3 a.m., countless news organizations ran with the false story. The timing of the reports—just as many newsrooms were facing their evening deadline—likely added to the confusion.

In a story this morning examining the fiasco, Editor and Publisher editor Greg Mitchell called the mix-up "one of the most disturbing media performances of its kind in recent years." Mitchell writes:

For hours, starting just before midnight, newspaper reporters and anchors such as MSNBC's Rita Cosby interviewed euphoric loved ones and helped spread the news about the miracle rescue. Newspaper Web sites announced the happy news and many put it into print for Wednesday at deadline. "They're Alive!" screamed the banner headline in the Indianapolis Star. Even the Los Angeles Times, three hours behind on the West Coast, carried the front page headline: "Suddenly There is Joy: 12 Miners Found Alive." The Boston Globe at least added a qualifier to its banner hed: "12 Miners Reportedly Found Alive."

In many cases, the same papers stopped the presses later, after tens of thousands of copies were printed and distributed, to carry the correct report. USA Today, for example, printed an update under the headline: "Official: 1 Miner Survived."

In another E&P story, Joe Strupp spoke about the snafu with several editors, including Martin Baron of the Boston Globe. Strupp writes:

Baron said the coverage was as good as could be expected, given the timing of events and the fact that the original reports were coming from rescue workers, government officials, and families of the miners. "It seemed we handled it just fine all along the way," said Baron. "It's not like people were working with no information. There were officials commenting on this. As it turned out, wrong information was given out."

Baron added that if the paper had held off on the story and it turned out to be true, it would have drawn criticism for waiting too long. "At some point, you've got to print a paper," he said. "I don't know what else you can do."

Media deaths set record in 2005

A total of 146 media workers were killed last year—more than in any other year on record, according to a report from the International News Safety Institute.

The record-breaking total was, the INSI said, "largely due to a tragic plane crash in Iran" that killed 48 journalists and support staff.

Of the rest of last year's media deaths, a third were in Iraq. A number of the deaths—such as those in the plane crash—were likely accidental, but many weren't. According to the INSI:

Most of the journalists died violently - at least 68 by gunfire, 7 by bombs, three by beatings and two, in Iraq, reportedly beheaded. More than 70 of the dead may have been targeted because of their work. Others died in crossfire or other random incidents of violence.

The INSI web site also contains a full list of media fatalities and their circumstances.

Child-porn story debate continues

This week, New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald appeared on CNN's "Reliable Sources" and NPR's "All Things Considered" to discuss his recent story about online child porn and the ethical dilemmas he faced during his reporting.

"Reliable Sources" host Howard Kurtz asked: "did Eichenwald get too close to his source and break some journalist rules in the process?" Eichenwald explained the circumstances of the case, and noted that "we were dealing with real children at real risk that we knew about, and we knew where they were." Eichenwald said:

I had the facts of this situation. We had very few good choices. And we made the one that I am actually the most proud of. I couldn't be prouder of "The New York Times."