Democracy Now! talks with Ken Ward Jr., an investigative reporter at the Charlotte, W.Va. Gazette, in part about mine safety issues and the media in relation to the Sago Mines disaster.

An excerpt:

JUAN GONZALEZ: Ken Ward, one of the things that you've reported also has been the amazing lack of involvement of federal mining regulation officials, MSHA officials, in providing information to the public, that this was largely handled by the mine owners themselves. And in most tragedies of this type, whether it's airline accidents or other major tragedies, it's the regulatory agencies that take over a lot of the public information. Could you talk about that a little bit?

KEN WARD: Sure. I should preface it by saying that I have personally been working out of my newspaper's office in Charleston, working the phones, some computer databases, looking through files. And so, I have not personally attended the briefings or been at the site. But I've watched the briefings and talked to our reporters, numerous ones who have been on site.

But it's a rather startling thing that's happening, that all of the information is being disseminated by the company, and one of our reporters, Scott Finn, asked about this at a press conference yesterday, and said, you know, “Who's in charge of relaying information here?” And the company said, “Well, we're in charge.” And that's clearly not the expectation under the Mine Safety and Health Act. When something like this happens at a mine, a serious accident, where there are conditions that could cause further injuries to people, what happens is MSHA inspectors get there, and they issue what's called a “K-order,” which gives them control of the site. And nothing can happen at that site without MSHA approval. And one of the things that historically MSHA has always done is played a very active role, if not the role, in disseminating information.

Everyone recalls the Quecreek near disaster in July of 2002. And Mine Safety and Health Administration experts and state mine safety experts in Pennsylvania took a very active role. The governor of Pennsylvania, then Mark Schweiker, kind of ran some of those press conferences, but he had the technical people there with him to answer questions.

The only faces the public and the press are seeing here are company officials, and it's just shocking as to why that is, because the Labor Department, of which MSHA is a part, has at least two, and perhaps more, public affairs employees at the mine site with satellite phones and all sorts of ability to communicate. But they haven't had any briefings. They haven't answered any questions. I personally asked MSHA to obtain for my newspaper from its files on the mine permits, this operation, a copy of the underground map. And I was told by Susie Boner [phon.], one of their P.R. people, “Well, you'll have to get that from the company.” I mean, it's just – it’s a shocking thing here.

But it's really nothing new for this particular administration at MSHA that has had a long history in their time in office of trying to throw stumbling blocks and hurdles at reporters trying to learn about what MSHA’s doing. We had an accident in West Virginia in January of 2003. Some miners near Moundsville, up in our northern panhandle near Pittsburgh, were drilling a new shaft down into CONSOL -- to get into CONSOL Energy’s McElroy Mine. The shaft blew up. Three of these workers were killed. And we asked for previous inspection reports from that shaft drilling operation. We filed our FOIA request, our Freedom of Information Act request, the day after the accident in January of 2003. We didn't get that information until the following December. And, of course, when we got the information it revealed that MSHA had not properly inspected the mine.

It's really an amazing sort of thing here. MSHA right now is an agency that doesn't have a permanent director. The director of MSHA is typically an assistant secretary of labor. The last one was a guy named Dave Lauriski, who for 30 years was a mine company employee. President Bush has nominated someone new named Richard Stickler to take that role. There have been no confirmation hearings scheduled for him. Mr. Stickler has a rather questionable sort of past. When he was being nominated to run Pennsylvania's mine safety agency, the United Mine Workers Union opposed him getting that job, because some of the Bethlehem Steel Mining operations which he managed had poor safety records.

You know, the national media, I think, has done -- portions of it have done a very good job of getting at some of the safety record of this operation, but I think the national media is showing its ignorance about mine safety issues, because no one has really -- you all are the first one who's raised the issue with me from the national media about where is MSHA in providing information here. And I'm certainly glad that you all asked about that. And I hope that some of my brethren in the media