Excellent news! A great job by the Brits! I look forward to the movie....

Ultraquiet No More (http://makeyourdepth.blogspot.com) has been all over the story since it initially broke. (disclosure: I blog there too)

The level of detail of the coverage there, compared to what the MSM was providing, is stunning.

I was constantly remembering the Kursk disaster as this was unfolding. Cheers to the Brits on a successful rescue, and to the Russian crewmembers for their courage throughout.

Like everyone, I'm glad the submariners were rescued. Kudos to the Brits and everyone else who pitched in, and to the Russians for swallowing their pride and asking for help.

It's funny how posters on this blog take every opportunity to attack the media. Like this: "The level of detail of the coverage there, compared to what the MSM was providing, is stunning."

You mean a website devoted to submarines paid more attention to this story than the general interest media? How stunning.

Hey Chris, It's not just Ultraquiet. Gateway Pundit was all over the story too. As far as I know, he is not a submariner, and his blog is certainly not dedicated to any single particular topic.

Given that he too was able to locate and deliver up-to-date information throughout the life of the story, and was also getting loads of traffic himself, your snarky remark about the sub-bloggers being ahead of the "general interest media" on the story rings hollow.

Truth is, there was once a time when stories like this one got plenty of media play. It's a great human interest story that had intense drama surrounding it, and geopolitical facets to boot.

Instead, the MSM continued their usual lazy tragedy-of-the week television barrage. It's pathetic.

I love the news shows, but there are times where I walk away for days at a time because they talk about the same old stuff.

As one of the commenters at Ultraquiet No More pointed out, here you have a story that was developing more by the minute as we got into the late evening hours on Saturday, and Fox News goves it about 2 minutes of lousy live coverage before throwing things to Cal Thomas on tape.

They're news networks for God's sake. When news breaks, cover it properly.

Alex

You make some good points. I was responding to your previous post that specifically referenced Ultraquiet, which is devoted to submarining. So it seemed logical that they would pay a lot more attention to the story than the general interest media. And you're right, my tone was more snarky than it should have been. I was responding to the fact that attacking the media seems to be a kneejerk reaction on this site, but in fairness I don't recall reading any of your posts, so I probably picked the wrong time to respond that way.

I'm not a fan of big media either, for reasons that are very different from most people posting here, but in this case it seems that without any video there wasn't a lot for the networks to present. A largely text-based story like this is actually best suited for the Net.

I think there's also a feeling that life in foreign countries is cheaper. Right now, or the last I heard, they're trying to rescue 102 miners from a flooded mine in China. I'm not seeing much minute by minute reporting of that, either.

I was not even aware of the mine story, and that's a great example of something that should be getting some play.

I understand what you're saying about "text-based" stories, and that does admittedly pose a problem for television coverage. I believe TV is selective when it comes to things like this as well. A great deal of the talking-head panels the nets gather to yap about a given topic end up being presented in "hollywood squares" format, with most of the focus on the prople doing the talking anyway.

And in lieu of live footage (understandable in cases like the sub rescue), the nets can always get their hands on file footage and/or have story-specific graphics (animations, etc) created to fulfill their visual needs.

If you have experts on hand who can impart knowledge, the lack of video, etc becomes less important.

As for the idea that life in other countries is cheaper, I fear you're probably right. That Chinese miner story sounds very compelling. I'll try to look up more on it tonight. Interesting that you mentioned it. It reminded me of a report I heard on the radio earlier this summer which revealed that in China, 6,000 miners die every year due to accidents. Talk about dangerous jobs....