ABSTRACT
On January 2, 2006, 13 miners were trapped by an explosion in the Sago coal mine near Tallmansville, West Virginia. Over the following 44 hours, television and print news media covered the rescue effort and its backdrop, focusing on the miners' families and friends who gathered at a Baptist church, and reporting the miscommunication from a rescuer to the families that the men had been found alive, when in fact only one had survived.
