Miners, not minors

In honor of both today's story and all the madness in France, here's some definitely non-violent French music played beautifully by a Chilean pianist.

Claudio Arrau performing Debussy's "Reflets dan l'eau"

So, have y'all heard anything else about the Chilean miners recently? Anything besides the fact that a few are getting married or juggling several affairs? Anything with any real weight to it?

If not, check this out: La Jornada reports in Spanish that one of the miners has been hospitalized after suffering severe symptoms of anxiety, while five or six others have been heavily affected by consuming alcohol in excess. Some are also getting sick of their overexposure to the media and one even went as far as to say he "was better off in the mine."

The miners, as nice as it is to hear that they are mostly okay (which is almost all you hear in Western media sources), should not be the focal point of the story anymore (nor should they ever have been, in my opinion). As Juan Cole smartly pointed out in a post on his blog a week ago, the mainstream media mostly treated the mine collapse as a human interest story and ignored the labor aspect, refusing to ask important questions about safety conditions in the mine or hold the mine owners accountable in any way.

For me, the interesting thing about La Jornada reporting on the hospitalization and alcohol excesses of the miners is that you can't find those aspects of the story mentioned in Western sources. I searched, and the only other source in which I could find the same story was the Sydney Morning Herald.

Why aren't they reporting it? I know they haven't simply lost interest in the story, because they're reporting on totally frivolous aspects of the aftermath (such as the love affairs mentioned above). It seems more likely that in order to stick with their original narrative, or possibly because they're lazy (and I'm only half joking), they are avoiding the more troubling aspects such as the hospitalizations because it may eventually force them to confront the more difficult questions cited above from Juan Cole's post. Knowing that most mainstream news media (especially cable television) are overwhelmingly owned or supported by big business and corporations, this is a very interesting example of how those interests can conflict with reporting the aspects of a story which may have negative long-term implications for the businesses (and their negligent practices) themselves.

In fact, it seems that simply ignoring the tougher aspects wasn't enough; Wall Street Journal deputy editor Daniel Henninger went as far as to say that due to the different machine parts and equipment produced by innovative companies around the world, the rescue of the miners was actually a "smashing victory for free-market capitalism." Yikes.