The media becomes the story in Beaconsfield

News on the miners trapped almost one km underground has been scant since they were discovered alive at least 10 days ago. The Australian media descended upon the Beaconsfield mine as soon as it became obvious this wasn't standard tragedy story, but the agononzing days that followed have been a desperate grab-bag of stories about Beaconsfield's reaction, the trapped miners' mental states, and even the content of their iPods. Th latest news comes from Dave Grohl, who received word that one of the miners had asked to listen to the Foo Fighters while waiting for the rescuers to poke through the rubble, and quicker than mine manager Matthew Gill could say "the who Fighters?" Grohl had given a commitment to come down to Tassie to have a beer and a feed with the two men if and when they get out of the mine.

It's been an entertaining couple of weeks down in Beaconsfied for our fourth estate; embarrassing to watch and read the gratuitous verbiage, but fascinating nonetherless. I don't think anyone was surprised when the journos decided to brandish their pens and turn their cameras on themselves when there was nothing else to report on -because, after all, journos and producers are a narcissistic lot, not to mention being prone to bitchiness and gossip. So poor Naomi Robson, hey. The Today Tonight journo (the descriptor's applied very loosely these days) was reported to have had her personal make-up trailor down in Beaconsfield, and her prissy atitude became the butt of the rest of the media's jokes. Well, if there's one rule in broadcast journalism, it's this: if you can't actually do your job better than your competion and peers, then the least you can do is look better than them. So in the past few days the nations hacks have become more important than the actual story, which isn't surprising or unusual if you follow the backroom gossip that appears in Crikey or on Tim Blair's blog, but it doesn't usually pop up in the mainstream press, especially www.news.com.au, or The Age.

Laugh if you will at the coverage, but this arvo the media became the real story (at least until the miners come out tomorrow), with the death of long time Nine reporter Richard Carleton. A heart attack forced the 60 Minutes reporter to the floor during a press conference earlier this afternoon, and poor Carleton was pronounced dead at a local hospital not long after. It's not up to me to vale or eulogise Carleton, but this latest twist, in the story that's had everything, will just raise the international interest, and if a media deal hasn't already been done, will raise the eventual price considerably. How Channel Nine handles Carleton's death will be a story in itself, but it will be interesting to find out whether anyone questions whether his employer, in its battle to get the ratings wood over its major competitor, Channel Seven, knowingly pushed Carleton too hard in Beaconsfield. It is, of course, a two way street: Carleton was a passionate, dedicated reporter who kept digging right until the end, and his posthumous legacy will no doubt be one of a reporter who worked himself to death.