I can’t find any reasons or excuses for what happened overnight with the media in regards to the mine explosion in West Virginia. I simply can’t. The chill that ran down my spine when I read of the explosion was equalled by the chill when I read of the media mistakes today.

I was working a normal news shift when a call came in for me from a mine site. I was told not to reveal if I knew who was calling and I was quickly told there had been a collapse at the site and co-workers suspected two were dead.

We made decisions quickly and I called the company PR person. Although he was onsite, he had not yet heard the news. Within a few minutes he got back to us, and asked us to please not release the information yet. In return, I would be allowed on company property and would be given an exclusive interview with the rescue team leader.

His reasoning was sound. It was near a shift change, and hundreds of families would be thrown into fear and grief. We agreed to wait until shift change and I headed out to the mine.

I was immediately escorted in and put in a boardroom. The contrast between the plush surroundings I was in bothered me because I knew miners were working desperately not far away to recover the bodies of two of their co-workers. The PR guy was also torn, he had been a journalist and I could see the concern his eyes could not hide.

The waiting was difficult. I was not restricted from talking to the newsroom. My first shock was when the president of the company walked into the boardroom a few hours after I arrived. He had probably flown up on the company plane. He was dressed in an expensive Italian suit, and I remember thinking how shiny his leather shoes were.

He thanked me for holding off the information for a few hours and asked me to tell him where I had gotten the information. I could not and would not do that. After the introductions he went to a corner of the room and did paperwork while a secretary served tea to the three of us. It was a china tea set and again the clash of events hit me.

It was a fair sized mine, and had highly trained rescue crews. It wasn’t long before a man appeared at the door. He had done his best to clean up, he was in coveralls. The president of the company introduced himself. The rescue crew co-ordinator looked grey and grim.

The PR guy sat across the table. That’s when I think I’d had enough. I turned my back to the president, set the equipment down and asked the miner if he had done media interviews before. He shook his head and said they’d been trained to. I handed him the mike. He was shaking. I was shaking, the PR guy was shaking. It was grim.

I explained we were taping, that I would tape the president, the PR guy, and him, and that if he wasn’t comfortable with what he said, we’d do it until he was. I explained I was on site not only to cover the deaths but to do an in-depth interview with him about mine rescue and had he been told? He had. I explained why our station had chosen to hold back the information for a couple of hours and did he understand that?

I will never forget his eyes. I will never forget. Although he’d cleaned up, he was caked in dust, it was embedded in his skin, and I fought down the flush of anger I felt at this man having to do this interview with a company president staring at him, a PR guy across from him, and china tea cups on the table.

And we began. He gave the statement he had been trained to make and we eased into the topic of mine rescue. He faltered a few times and I very quietly joked about how very hard dealing with the media was. He knew when we were done, he’d be facing more.

He took great pride in his men, their training as well he should have. As I eased the interview back to the events of that day, a tear rolled out of his eye unbidden and left a track in the white dust he couldn’t wash from his skin. I used my back to shield him from the gaze of the president of the company and gave him my condolences.

Then we were done and the rescue co-ordinator and the PR guy escorted me to  the area where the deaths had occured. I shook his hand, and very quietly said I’d be praying for him, his crew and his co-workers.

And I walked away, went to the car and filed the first report. Two deaths. We don’t have time to feel when there is a job to do, the feelings come in the waiting, or after the work is done. Waiting for the shift change, waiting for the rescue crew to do their job and confirm identities saved a fair bit of grief for others.

The company wrote my company a thank you letter. That’s nice, but that didn’t matter nearly as much as word from some miners who told me how grateful the rescue co-ordinator was for my sensitivity with his first interview. Media training does not prepare you for the real thing. He just pulled two bodies out of rubble, and he had to face media in a board room? A president of a company staring at him? Most people in his job tell me it never gets easier. I believe them.

And I wonder today how media who messed up so badly overnight are dealing with their mistakes. It could happen to any of us at any time in the rush to get the information out. We move on, we leave the grieving behind, the horror and the loss, we try not to think about the empty space at the dinner table, the funeral service, the tears. The loss. I think of hope and how fragile it is. I think about courage.  I try not to think about shiny leather shoes and a tear in fine dust.