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According to Arianna, the man who brought you the Judy Miller, Queen of All Iraq show has a few things to say about the Crandall Canyon Mine tragedy:

Despite so many questions left unanswered about the mine’s safety and the decisions the mine’s owners made, the Times did no follow up. Indeed, New York Times readers - and shareholders — would have been better (much better) served if Times editors had spared the expense of sending reporters to Huntington and had just republished the reports from the Salt Lake Tribune and AP.

Instead, last night, Sulzberbger preferred to rationalize away his paper’s choices. “I’m told that 324 violations are not a lot,” he said to me.

I guess it isn’t if you’re not the one who winds up at the bottom of a fucking mineshaft.

Read Tula’s posts about mine owner Bob Murray, the union-hating nut who talks to squirrels. While it may just be bad reporting and a reflexive tendency to take information in small, digestible bites from professional PR flacks, the choice by the Times and other outlets to portray Murray as a cuddly, benevolent patriarch in the wake of what happened is sounding a bit like “let them eat cake.”