Back To Quecreek

Following Michael Novak's championing of the Quecreek miners for showing us "the heroism, toughness, and mental inventiveness of the humble people of America who at work get dirt on their faces and calluses on their hands" and Bush's trip down to PA for some back slappin', Bill Berkowitz observes that the "One item that hasn't factored into the 'compassionate conservatism' equation is the overall issue of safety of mineworkers." After all, the Bush administration has cut funding for the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) by 6 percent, and Berkowitz claims that "Miners have long suffered at the hands of union-busting industry leaders. Now, with the Bush Administration in power, those industry leaders are in charge of the henhouse."

Typically, these points have not been raised in the mainstream media. The miner rescue was treated exclusively as a feel-good story that fit nicely into its soon-to-be-created Disney format. In order to relay this type of narrative, the media had to strip the story of nearly any relevant social context. So, we were constantly admonished about how "dangerous" the miner's job is, but not provided with any substantial reporting on why that is so, or how the disaster fits into the larger, historical struggle for safety and labor regulations in the mining industry. On CNN's In Depth page on Quecreek, for example, they devote one measly article to the issue of "why we burn coal." The rest of the page completely fetishizes the rescue operation.

For a foil to this type of coverage, the WSWS ran two good background articles on the mine rescue. One can be found here; the other, here.