MMMM #114 Media-Ready Survivors

     The miners in Chile who are in the process of being rescued from the mine that has been their home and prison for weeks are certainly ready to come up, escaping the fate so many other miners have suffered.

     Alabamians certainly can relate. Hundreds or thousands of state residents have died in mine accidents over the decades, including 107 who died in a mine explosion in 1905.

     But the miners in Chile also also ready for the army of reporters and producers and videographers and photographers who will pry into their lives the moment they return to the surface. The rescue managers up top...no doubt partly to give them something to do....have sent them materials to provide them media-training. They're using closed circuit TV to connect them with a psychologist and a former journalist who are teaching them how to ask the interviewer to repeat the question if they don't understand it, and how to deflect questions they prefer not to answer.

     The men, who have received more than 1,000 job offers, will also be taught how to open bank accounts and understand how to handle their money. The wife of one miner said simply that he will give interviews to the media offering the largest check.

     Most disasters happen so quickly that there's no time for thinking about media training, but the slow- motion pace of the trapped miners disaster has provided us with perhaps the first large group of mass-media trained survivors. Good luck to them! It may have been easier dealing with the boredom of the mines than with the insistent questioning of the reporters.



[UPDATE: 8:41am, The miners are going to sign an agreement that all profits will be shared...and that there is a 17 day part of the ordeal that will remain a secret.]

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]