One of the 33 trapped Chilean miners Luis Urzúa with Chile's president Piñera at San Jose Mine (Credit: Wikipedia)

The Baltimore Sun reported that Fox News had the highest ratings of the networks on Oct. 13, the night that the 33 Chilean miners were rescued.

The Sun broke down the results from the mad scramble by Fox News, CNN and MSNBC for viewership, noting that “Fox News had an overall average audience of 4,862,000 viewers” from 8 PM to 11 PM EST that night.

The Guardian reported in a sub-head: “More than 2,000 journalists flocked to a desert in Chile to feed global demand for a story.” It quoted an “El Pais article” that addressed miners with advice from Hernán Rivera Letelier, a retired miner and Chilean writer: “Grab hold of your family…Hold on to them as you hung on to the capsule that brought you out. It’s the only way to survive this media deluge that’s raining down on you.”

The Guardian also stated:  “The Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph ran articles criticising the BBC’s 26-strong team as overkill…The demand for coverage was astounding. CNN.com reported 4.6m live video streams, up an astonishing 8,000% on the previous four-week average. The 82.5m pageviews were the highest since the Obama inauguration.”

See the Sun’s post here.  See iMediaEthics’ previous reports on the miners here.