No, Really, I Get The Point

For the last 70 days I've stayed really interested in the trapped Chilean miner saga. Frankly, I find it to be a miracle of modern technology that their rescue is even possible. If you think about it, just 15 years ago the technology which allowed the miners to alert the rescue team they had survived the first couple of weeks of being trapped didn't even exist. There was no chance they would have been found alive. Now communications have come such a long way that it was not only discovered that they were still alive down there, but we got video from inside the mine within a couple days. Also, because of what an amazing story this is, I had no problem with this story staying in the news until all 33 trapped miners were rescued late last night. (It probably didn't hurt that Chile's President made his money by running and then selling a TV network and as such he knew how to keep this story TV-friendly.) In an era where bad news comes after more bad news and there are 24-hour cable news networks that don't know (or just don't care) about the difference between what is a fact and what is an opinion, it was refreshing to have a story that everyone agreed was simply awesome.

That being said I got a little annoyed with the coverage of the actual rescue yesterday because, much like any other new event being covered live and for an extended period of time, eventually the 24-hour news channels start to run out of things to say. For example, CNN had built itself a replica of the rescue capsule that was being lowered into the shaft and which would eventually pull the miners to safety one at a time. Just looking at you could see it was a tight fit. (Actually, given an earlier report that the rescue shaft was only a couple of feet wide you could have figured it out without ever seeing the capsule, but seeing it made for good TV.) Still, when that first news anchor climbed it truly drove home the point of just how tight this would be as the miners were slowly brought back to the surface. Message received, well done. The problem was that by the time the tenth man was pulled to the surface, CNN was kind of out of things to say. Thus, every single anchor or expert that came onto the set felt the need to kill time by climbing in to the capsule and stating their height and weight to once again remind us that this rescue capsule was not roomy. It was unnecessary after the first guy, and yet they kept doing it:

"I'm 5'9" and 160 pounds and I don't have any room to move!"
"Now, I'm 5'6" and 120 and even I think this is a tight squeeze."
"At 5'10" I only have a couple inches of head-room to spare."

This turned into an annoying exercise in repetition. It was like reading from a player program for CNN's on-air staff. (The good news is that they no longer need to put out that series of trading cards.) Yes, it's a small space - we get it. I understand that I would never fit into this capsule and I would still be trapped underground. I already knew that, which is why I never pursued a career in mining. All I really learned from all this repetition was that CNN is staffed by very tiny people and their intramural basketball team must suck.