A Cave-In in a Mine in San Jose

On August 5, 2010, a cave-in in a mine in San Jose, Chile trapped 33 workers underground. Reports began to announce what limited information they had coming in. They reported, "that due to limited food, water and oxygen, that there was no official confirmation whether they would be alive or not." (Weik. 2010) This may not have taken into account that curtain of these miners family may have not been notified of the situation yet. This also seems to have no official statement from the mining company itself.

The information of the miners that was given out was how many there were. There was no identification of any miner, any condition of these people, or even scientific data showing possibility of survival. This could have driven family members into a panic not knowing if relatives who were employed at the mine were involved or not. Also, the family members of those who were, in-fact, trapped, had no more information than the chance of their relative are surviving has the possibility of being slim. I feel this article was released too early with too little information that may have been extremely harmful to those who were still unaware of the situation.

The company itself was not represented in this report. It was only attacked about its safety standards. The company had no chance to defend itself or give up any information regarding the effort to rescue these 33 personnel. The article does discuss that rescue operations were underway, but made no mention of what company was behind the efforts. Again I feel that this article was premature, only looking to attract the outside masses and fed by negativity. This approach is harmful to many parties involved but effective.

Better research should have been put into the article before release. Communicating half information's just to be the first to report can be extremely harmful to many parties. An unbiased report at first would be beneficial, just facts that are known. After the initial report, a follow up should close any questions and again, only give facts that are true and known about the situation.