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I hope you will take a few minutes to look at some useful stories about the coverage of the West Virginia miners' deaths. Many journalists wrote stories yesterday about what went wrong -- I will leave that to others this morning. Let me focus, instead, on some who did things well.

 

My Poynter colleague, Meg Martin, tells the story of how the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette stopped the presses in the middle of Tuesday night to get the story right. The paper's managing editor tells Meg that about 114,000 copies of the Post-Gazette's 256,000-paper press run were delivered to homes, businesses and boxes throughout the city with the news that only one miner had survived.

 

Also, Poynter.org editor Bill Mitchell produced a story in which he interviews former St. Petersburg Times publisher Andy Barnes about the pressure for newspapers to print hot, "definitive" headlines. The story includes some audio clips with Barnes.

Editor & Publisher has the story of how The Boston Globe trashed 30,000 copies of the paper that included the "miracle" story. The story says that The Globe managed to get the correct story into 145,000 of its 414,000 copies.

I like how some editors, like the Raleigh, N.C. News & Observer's executive editor, Melanie Sill, explained the situation to readers. Sill used her blog to quickly explain Tuesday morning how the paper ended up printing a headline that said "Miracles Happen in West Virginia." 

 

The "Miracle"

I am interested in how often headline writers used the word "miracle" in headlines. It was used liberally this week, when it appeared that the West Virginia miners were alive. I wonder how people's faith is affected in cases when the "miracles" that they hope for end up not happening. As my Poynter colleague Bob Steele said to me yesterday, "I think the word 'miracle' -- just like the word 'hero' -- is overused."   

 

"Miracle" is a word that seeps into our collective lexicon. DuPont uses the motto "The miracles of science." (See the logo in the top-left corner of the page.)  A non-profit alliance of children's hospitals is called the "Children's Miracle Network." And a lot of us watched "Miracle on 34th Street" in the last few weeks.

 

It seems to me that this is an "everyday person" kind of story. What is a miracle? Do miracles really occur? If miracles do occur, who or what causes them? What does it mean to your faith if you hope for a miracle, but the outcome is not what you hoped for? Do journalists use the word "miracle" as a way to softly say something with a religious overtone, but to avoid sounding "religious" and offending somebody?

 

Historically, the word "miracle" implies that a supernatural power was involved in an event. The Catholic Encyclopedia says this about "miracles":

In general, a wonderful thing, the word being so used in classical Latin; in a specific sense, the Latin Vulgate designates by miracula wonders of a peculiar kind, expressed more clearly in the Greek text by the terms terata, dynameis, semeia, i.e., wonders performed by supernatural power as signs of some special mission or gift and explicitly ascribed to God.

The explanation continues:

A miracle is said to be above nature when the effect produced is above the native powers and forces in creatures of which the known laws of nature are the expression, as raising a dead man to life, e.g., Lazarus (John 11), the widow's son (1 Kings 17). A miracle is said to be outside, or beside, nature when natural forces may have the power to produce the effect, at least in part, but could not of themselves alone have produced it in the way it was actually brought about. Thus the effect in abundance far exceeds the power of natural forces, or it takes place instantaneously without the means or processes which nature employs. In illustration we have the multiplication of loaves by Jesus (John 6), the changing of water into wine at Cana (John 2) -- for the moisture of the air by natural and artificial processes is changed into wine -- or the sudden healing of a large extent of diseased tissue by a draught of water. A miracle is said to be contrary to nature when the effect produced is contrary to the natural course of things.

The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy adds this:

Aquinas ("Summa Contra Gentiles," III) says, "Those things are properly called miracles which are done by divine agency beyond the order commonly observed in nature (praeter ordinem communiter observatum in rebus)." A miracle, philosophically speaking, is never a mere coincidence no matter how extraordinary or significant. (If you miss a plane and the plane crashes, that is not a miracle unless God intervened in the natural course of events causing you to miss the flight.)

There are plenty of resources for those who do not believe in miracles, or are at least skeptical of miraculous claims.

Here is a Web site that is dedicated to all sorts of modern-day events that people have attributed to miracles.

Two years ago, Religionlink.org discussed the issue of miracles.

Cheerleader Injuries Rise

The Asociated Press reported :

Research indicates cheerleading injuries more than doubled from 1990 through 2002, while participation grew just 18 percent over the same period.

"Cheerleading is not what it used to be. It's no longer standing on the sidelines looking cute in a skirt," said Erin Brooks, a former cheerleader who teaches a safety course in Mississippi. "It's more body skills."

A study published [Tuesday] in the journal Pediatrics estimates 208,800 young people ages 5 to 18 were treated at U.S. hospitals for cheerleading-related injures during the 13-year period.

Most of the injuries were suffered by 12- to 17-year-olds; nearly 40 percent were leg, ankle and foot (lower extremity) injuries. The average age of the injured teenagers was 14.4 years old, and 97 percent of the injured were female.

Almost all the patients in the study were treated at emergency rooms and released. But because researchers used only ER numbers [gathered by the Consumer Product Safety Commission], the true number of those injured is even greater, since many kids are treated at doctors' offices or by team trainers, researchers said.

"It's not just standing on sidelines with pompoms going, 'Rah, rah, rah.' It uses gymnastics, and some stunts are certainly more dangerous than others," said Dr. Barry Boden, an orthopedic surgeon [specializing in sports medicine at Rockville, Md., who was not involved in the study].

Cheerleading is not considered a sanctioned sport by some state high school athletic associations.
As a result, coaches are not always trained, and some schools lack the proper facilities and equipment, said the study's lead author, Brenda Shields, [one of the study's authors and an injury researcher at Columbus Children's Research Institute in Ohio].

For a full-text PDF version of the Pediatrics study, click here.

Deducting Charitable Contributions

Some of the nation's best-known charities, including United Way, the American Heart Association, the American Red Cross and the American Cancer Society favor legislation now before Congress that would allow people who do not itemize their tax returns to still claim charitable contributions as individual deductions. Read the legislation text here.

 

For the last 20 years, you've had to itemize in order to claim charitable donations. United Way estimates [PDF] that it would see a $100-million-per-year increase in giving if the House and Senate can agree on the terms of the legislation. Churches might benefit, too.

 

However, The NonProfit Times reports that at least 50 charities now are working against the bill, because under the proposed legislation, the first $210 (or $420, for "joint filers") you give to charities would not be tax-deductible. Currently, if you itemize, you may deduct everything you give to a qualified charity. 

 

The NonProfit Times says itemizers currently give the overwhelming majority of money to charities. The 25 percent of Americans who itemize their taxes, the publication said, gave approximately $150 billion last year, which made up more than 80 percent of the total $187.92 billion given by individuals, as reported by the Giving USA Foundation, an arm of the American Association of Fundraising Counsel. 

Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible.

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