“Mount St Helens WARNING: Scientist reveals molten rock 'rising FIVE metres a DAY'”

So reported Britain’s Express newspaper last week. The newspaper added that an eruption, like the volcano’s famous deadly one in 1980, was a possibility and that “[s]cientists are now closely watching the volcano to make sure they are prepared in case the same happens again.”

The thing is, the news report is 15 years out of date. "The dome at St. Helens has been quiet since 2008,” seismologist Wes Thelen told KGW on Tuesday.

This was an odd goof by the Express, but it’s had far worse in recent years.

In 2008 the Express and its sister publications settled a libel case and issued a public apology for suggesting the parents of a missing 3-year-old girl had caused her death and covered it up. A year later, Britain’s advertising watchdog censured the Express four times in less than a month “for disguising advertorials as legitimate news stories,” The Guardian reported.

The Mount St. Helens activity that scored the Express’ interest last week caused a much bigger media ruckus in the fall of 2004, when the mountain “burped” after a series of small earthquakes. A new lava dome formed as the volcano pushed molten rock to the surface.

“Gawkers in two states scrambled for the best view,” The Oregonian wrote on Oct. 5, 2004.

Some of those gawkers got to see “a small wisp of smoke rising at the volcano’s summit. ... The plume drifted eastward, walling off the sky with a white-and-dark-gray blanket from the treetops east of the mountain, rising to the height of the summit.”

“This is God's power in action," said one awed observer.

But, for Portlanders who stayed in the city, the volcano’s power remained distant. Binoculars-carrying denizens who gathered at elevated spots such as Council Crest Park and Pittock Mansion admitted there was “nothing to see.”

That’s even more accurate 15 years later.

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry