The miners, the media and the president: a Chilean fairy tale

The rescue of 33 miners trapped underground for more than two months in Chile has benefited from massive media coverage. It is not really that surprising; it was the first time in recent history that people have survived being trapped underground for so long. 

Setting a record for mine-related disasters obviously contributed to making this event so special, but the rescue operation was also unique. From the technology used, to the video feed from inside the mine, everything was new. The story attracted 2,000 journalists to the site of the disaster. There was nothing about the development of this exceptional event that anyone could have predicted. 

As Chilean Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said: “If this story was a movie, no one would have believed that this story would have happened as it has now”. All of these elements contributed to leading people from everywhere in the world to follow the event.

A global fairytale

The BBC, which sent 26 journalists to the San Jose mine, has been accused of overkill by other media. At certain moments their broadcast was similar to a reality show, showing the story and the picture of each miner, videos and the map of the mine. These images played an important role in appealing to the audience. The ability to view pictures and videos of the trapped miners made the story more real, touching people even deeper. They permitted the outside world to actually see that the men were alive.

But it is more than that, this is one of those stories people love to read, because it makes them dream, it is about heroism and the hope of a happy ending. We all want to read a moving story at least once in a while, and it is best when it makes us reflect on our own state of existence, the meaning of life and destiny. This was more than a reality show: it was dressed up as a fairy tale.

All of the necessary elements were there: a hopeless start, the point when everybody was ready to give up, the hope emanating like a ray of sunlight after a storm with the message “We are all well here in the refuge – the 33”, the technicians studying a way to drill a hole large enough to rescue the 33 miners, and the construction of a capsule adapted to this extreme situation – the miners were about 630 metres underground. The capsule itself became a character of this fairy tale, one of the heroes. It was even baptised - Phoenix- like the mythological bird rising from its ashes. Nobody can deny though that this truly was an extraordinary rescue operation.

People from all over the world were able to follow the rescue in all of its phases and to see the growth of Camp Hope, the installation of tents which extended as journalists and technicians kept on arriving. The cameras followed the capsule entering the mine, filming the rescue live. 

Thanks to Twitter, people were able to comment on the rescue effort and share their thoughts. Tweets from the audience were published on news websites, demonstrating how many people were following intently and how deeply they were empathising with the miners. This must have generated a common sense amongst those who were following the event all over the world that they were part of a group, feeling and sharing the same emotions. 

Through this Twitter proved itself, once more, to be a near immediate way to follow news as it unravels. For example, the BBC tweeted a list of correspondents in Chile and politicians tweeting on the story. Various other media shared large amounts of information via their websites, from opinion articles to a plan of the drilling, to pictures and the life stories of each miner.

Media amplification?

Several media covered the rescue live. Filming civilians and broadcasting the video to millions of people around the world was however criticised as being intrusive. The miners were filmed in an intimate moment, when they met their families for the first time after spending more than two months deep underground. But we tend to forget this aspect when the cameras are rolling and our attention is gripped.

Chilean President Sebastián Piñera has been accused of using the situation to gain popular support. Nonetheless, after the devastating earthquake that struck Chile last February, perhaps the country needed a ‘national success to feel reunited’. The saturated media coverage transformed the event in an internationally-known success, worth the national pride. The media also gave a large-scale visibility to the President, in a sense granting him custody of the accomplishment in front of his fellow citizens and the international audience. Televisions, local and internationals, helped him gain a rise in popularity, giving him voice and visibility. This was a perfect opportunity, politically speaking, for him to appear close to the workers, to their families, all united under the Chilean flag. 

As Rosental Alves, a professor of journalism at the University of Texas, told CNN: “Somehow the Chile authorities understood how to make it so emotional and appealing”. And with around one billion people having watched the rescue live on television, we can certainly call it a ‘media success’. 

Posted on October 29, 2010 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Filed under news, personal.