Robert Murray

Friday's CBS Evening News managed to link former President George H.W. Bush to the plight of the trapped miners in Utah as correspondent Nancy Cordes used archive video to show how Bush, when Vice President back in 1984, toured an Illinois mine with many safety violations that's owned by the same man who owns the Utah mine. Anchor Katie Couric introduced a story on how the mines owned by Bob Murray of Murray Energy have “been cited over and over for safety violations.” Cordes undermined Couric's implication by relaying how the “Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah has a better-than-average safety rate.” But, she added, over 1984 video of Bush wearing a hard hat as he rode in an underground truck, “the same cannot be said of this Illinois mine owned by the same man, Robert Murray, and toured by then-Vice President Bush senior in 1984. This mine has racked up $1.4 million in proposed fines so far this year.” Cordes noted how new mine safety laws are being phased in, but fretted that “new legislation being considered in Congress that calls for even tougher safety standards has been attacked by the industry.”