The Anchoress on the miners and the news: "For the last few days the families and friends of the tragic miners of West Virginia have had to endure an agony that no right-thinking person would ever wish on another - and last night’s “miscommunications” within the press, first announcing that 12 of the 13 miners were alive, only to correct themselves later and declare 12 of 13 dead - well, the face of the anguished young woman heading the Drudge Report, about says it all...

Journalism used to run on facts. It wasn’t enough to have a rumor, you had to nail it down; it wasn’t enough to suspect something - if you suspected it, you expended the shoe leather to prove it. Now, unfortunately, beginning at least with Mary Mapes’ odd idea that the the standard of journalism precludes proving one’s charge (it is now enough that the charge is made, and the accused must prove a negative), but particularly since Hurricane Katrina, mainstream journalism has decided it doesn’t need to run on facts; emotionalism is the new fuel on which the press is running."

This is a bad gas to run the press on.