Like everyone else I was elated when the miners were saved but I felt that the story should have ended there.

Now it seems they have retired from digging for gold underground in favor of digging for it in the media.

Where were all the fund-raisers and concerts for all those miners who died previously?

I also believe that 24 miners died in China on the day ours were saved - not much of a story to sell there I suppose. We prefer happy endings.

If Channel 7 moves quickly enough, maybe they will both be on "Dancing With The Stars" next year.

I think the men should get all the money they can get for their story and think they should give some money to some of the other miners who helped rescue them. But in the end it is up to the men, to do what they consider to be right. I dont even want to know how much they got, just that they were well looked after.

"Chequebook journalism" is not in itself wrong. Journalists are not amateurs, after all, they ply their trade in return for money, just as their employers provide you with TV shows, newspapers and magazines in exchange for your money.

What has been irretrievably blurred in recent years is the line between news reporting and entertainment.

There no longer exists a living example of the "newspaper of record". No-one any longer even expects a daily newspaper to confine itself merely to the reporting of facts. Possibly the last organ to take itself this seriously was the New York Times, which the Independent's Robert Fisk recently suggested should rename itself "American Officials Say".

But even there, with the US administration's love of spin, who can these days take what "American Officials Say" as unbiased and factual anyway?

Like it or not, news has become a lucrative branch of the entertainment business - the ultimate "reality show", if you will, in which we are offered a selective window through which to observe the goings-on around us. Every aspect of its presentation is constructed from detailed surveys on our taste, our likes and turn-offs, and designed to please an audience defined by the marketing department.

If we find this distasteful, we have only ourselves to blame. In the same way as we have managed to reduce our influence on the nature of our government to a choice every five years between the lesser of two evils, we have encouraged the media to increasingly treat us as children.

And there is no way back, in either case. We will continue to elect professional politicians who care only about their pay, perks and pensions. And we will continue to feed the ugly maw of the media, who in turn will pay obscene amounts of money to five-minute celebrities.

Because that, according to their researchers and their accountants, is what we want.

Pericles,
I remember back in the seventies when the press tag "from our Washington Correspondent" really meant "as received from the Pentagon or the Whitehouse". (Fact, not opinion).

I suspect that not much has changed - it's just filtered through FOX.

Just more Bread and Circuses to keep us entertained and distracted.

My feeling is that the miners would seem to be acting greedily if they accept the large amounts of money that will be offered to tell their story. The story is public property and should not be used to gain any wealth for the individual. Did Stuart Diver receive huge sums of money for his story, or had we not moved toward the sort of society that we appear to live in now where it is almost as if people rejoice in having been in adverse situations in order to receive payment for what has happened when the story is told through the media? I hope that the miners see what could happen as a result of being paid obscene amounts of money to tell people about their accident.

Cant agree with Snooty -

the story of the rescue and the events surrounding it is public property sure but the story of the miners themselves, their experience and perceptions while trapped is their own - they can choose to say nothing and are obliged to say nothing - except perhaps in the context of witnesses into the casues of the rock fall that trapped them - but beyond that their story is their own to sell or not.

If some wants to pay to hear it so be it.