Media Explosion at Pike River Mine

It is virtually impossible to say anything about the Pike River Mine incident without sounding patronising, trite, clichéd or a combination of all three.  Twenty-nine men are buried 1500 metres underground.  Immediate rescue impossible.  As the hours haul themselves around the clock, brows furrow and greyness sets heavily into the eyes of friends and families.  Hope beds itself in for a long haul.

In reality there is little more to be said, and yet there would be barely a soul to say nothing.  That is a sure indicator of the deep shock these kinds of tragedies hammer home.  Even the most reticent are compelled to utter, to mimic even, in order to speak of "unspeakable things".  People, previously unknown to pray, miraculously begin to offer prayers.  News reporters, as if by reflex, ask passersby: “How are you feeling?”

There is a time when words become empty tokens, expulsions of breath with no force of meaning.  They tread close to becoming unintended insults, unwanted injuries.  Perhaps that time is much closer to the event when sympathy, prayers and sorrow do not require the gesture of speech to be shared.  Such time rather for “the news” to step back, watch and listen.  Pike River is not a media explosion.  It is the everyday lives of ordinary people being played out against the background of something awful.