We thought it was a powerful photograph of family members of the miners trapped in the Crandall Canyon coal mine. Thanks to a call from a reader we have since found that to be not true. Here’s how it happened:
Sonny Olsen, a lawyer working as a spokesman for the families of the six trapped miners, announced he was going to read a statement by the family members, some of whom would be present. Several TV stations and two still photographers (including me) showed up early and waited for things to start.
Before the families walked over to stand behind Sonny, he laid out the ground rules of the event. There will be no hounding of the families, he said. They will not be talking, they will not be answering questions. Please respect their privacy.
Sonny then went over to the family members and walked them up to the microphones. As they stood behind him, he read their powerful statement, where they insisted that the recovery effort continue until their loved ones were brought home.
The other still photographer and I were drawn to the image of the young mother and her children standing at the front of the group with her two children. It was the shot.
After Sonny was done reading, the family members walked off. I approached Sonny to get the names of the family members we had photographed, especially the young mother. He said that they would not be giving their names.
The other still photographer and I pondered our dilemma. We needed the names to run in our captions, if at all possible.
We were in a public park, so there was nothing stopping us from approaching the family members and asking for their names. Except that it would have caused a big scene. There had been a protective bubble around the miners’ families all along. And we had, contrary to the opinions of some, respected their privacy as best we could. Approaching them now would break that bubble. We decided to honor the ground rules of the access we’d been granted and leave them alone.
I sent this caption: Family members of miners missing in the Crandall Canyon coal mine stand with spokesman Sonny Olsen as he reads their statement to the media in the Huntington City Park. The family members wished to remain unidentified.
For nearly a week I thought of this young mother, imagining the loss of her loved one trapped underground. Then we got a phone call. A reader notified us that this woman is not the wife of a trapped miner. She is Sonny Olsen’s wife.
As I’ve said before, mistakes like this are the worst. I don’t feel much better realizing that in this case we were led to believe something that wasn’t true and also pressured to not ask the questions that would have prevented this error from hitting print.
It wasn’t uncommon for media outlets covering the mine story to not aggressively pursue the names of family members. An article from another outlet on this very same press conference said, “The family members asked (the media) not to use their names out of fear of recrimination.”