Who's Fault Is It Anyway?

Whom do we hold accountable?

Is it Mr. Hatfield, President and CEO of ICG, the mining concern that owns the Sago Mine in West Virginia. Is it the regulatory agencies for not ordering the mines production shut down? Or do we just chalk it up to an unmitigated disaster caused by mother nature?

To date we have no idea what went wrong inside that mine on an early Monday morning. Everything released so far is merely conjecture and supposition. It will take some time for the investigators to gather enough information in order to determine the point of origin and possible cause of the explosion. I have heard statements from the reporters on the scene that the explosion may have happened in a shut down part of the mine which was no longer being used and was in fact sealed off.

I was touched by the raw emotion in the voice of Mr. Hatfield as he tried to answer questions from the press at 3:00 this morning. He was visibly shaken and justifiably indignant at those reporters who kept asking in a belligerent manner that he tell them WHO mislead the families earlier in the evening. My hat is off to Mr. Hatfield for a job well done and for holding his ground with the media sharks circling around him.

Those reporters and their asinine questions prompted me to write another post on this particular subject. The sheer hubris of some of the reporters and their questions confounds me. Here is a company and it's employees and families trying to cope with a tragedy of titanic proportions, and these reporters continue to try and find someone to demonize and/or scapegoat for a story. It was not enough news that people had been trapped and all but one had perished, they wanted fresh meat. Despite repeated attempts, even this afternoon, to explain the complexities and personal issues that are involved, some reporters still acted as if the privacy of the families and the companies attempts to get things right did not matter.

In my opinion, and this is an opinion Blog, this showed us glaringly what the problem is with many journalists today. Recent problems with both the credibility of the press and the motivations behind it's power brokers and editors lead me to often times doubt the desire of the modern journalist to actually find or report the truth.

As A father, I am constantly reminding my children that "words mean things." And not only the words themselves but the way in which they are placed together in sentences, paragraphs and documents. The subtle leaving off of a word can make a sentence entirely different. Why the English lesson you ask? Several times just today have I heard sentences in which safety violations were mentioned without qualifying who was in charge of the Mine at the time of the violations. Seems a little important to me from the standpoint of the truth that a person would be very clear in identifying the proper company with which to place blame for multiple regulatory infractions.

ICG did not take possession as owners of the Sago property until late fall 2005. The previous owner was in bankruptcy and it is likely that they had not taken as close a look at the safety of the operation as they should have. In the end, this may or may not have led to the accident that occurred on Monday morning. But until the truth in the form of concrete evidence arrives, perhaps it's best if we don't crucify Mr. Hatfield and his company. After all, they might not have been able to prevent an act of nature in the first place.

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