Tragic Miscommunication

I'm receiving tons of e-mail dumping on the mainstream media for getting the miners story wrong — some of those e-mails are coming up in Your Word.

I spent 20 years on the street as a reporter and spent God only knows how much of my life in these instant cities of satellite trucks that spring up at major stories, like the one in Tallmansville, West Virginia.

I've also been in the business of anchoring a live news program for 10 years now.

So I've got 30 years in this game and let me tell you why you went to bed thinking the miners were alive and woke up to find them dead.

You want your news in raw feeds, fast as they come, uninterrupted by pesky news people actually checking things out. I know this because I do a live feed show. You want the live feeds so much you actually prefer three or four feeds on the screen at once.

I know this is a fact because I see the information everyday that tells us what people are watching.

This program lives on live feeds. We've been No. 1 in our time slot for a long time. In February it will be four years. Why? Because I'm pretty or smart? Neither. We just know what the deal here is at 5 p.m. ET: Live, live, live and more live — and as quick as the picture pops up on a preview monitor.

Nobody gets to a live feed quicker than I do.

I spent plenty of days chasing rumors around satellite cities — things like we saw live Tuesday night — and the facts would knock the rumors down in 15 or 20 minutes, and the erroneous story wouldn't make it on the air.

But things have changed. Our ability to bring things to you live and direct has increased a thousand fold. Your appetite for live pictures has increased so much we are positive it is the most important factor in what you want.

Now, what you need to know about raw feeds is that sometimes pictures tell a thousand words that leave a misimpression or tell a phony story or tell just the opposite of actual truth.

It's the way news is now. And it's not brand new. This started June 17, 1994 with O.J.'s white Bronco. Or maybe when Tom Pettit was covering an otherwise routine moment when Lee Harvey Oswald was being perp walked to a cop car in the basement of the Dallas police department.

Live is suspense. It is real. It is the definition of news. But it can fool you. So be careful.

That's My Word.

Watch John Gibson weekdays at 5 p.m. ET on "The Big Story" and send your comments to: myword@foxnews.com

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