The word "reportedly" in the [Boston] Globe headline was commendable, said Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, a journalism school based in St. Petersburg, Fla. Many headlines, he noted, went too far because they allowed "no wiggle room..."

The error, said Tompkins, was that "we took what appeared to be good information ... and added a level of certainty that it did not warrant." Besides the headlines that went too far, many lead paragraphs dropped any attribution for news that the miners were safe.
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