The coverage of the Japanese Nuclear crisis was a journalistic disgrace for the most part. The most sensationalistic elements ruled the headlines as day after day passed and heroic progress in averting a meltdown was being made. When the Press behaves like this it shoots itself in the foot along with the public it supposedly serves! The Right is unforgiving once the story is settled and then they don’t have to make things up about a liberal bias!
One of the pivotal events in bringing about the Spanish American War was the behavior of William Randolph Hearst and the New York Journal. A routine inspection of a cabin that was carrying an actual spy, Senorita Clemencia Arango, (who was carrying secret papers) turned into an officially sanctioned sexual assault on an American woman that needed to be avenged by military intervention in Cuba when it was reported on by Hearst’s New York Journal! When the Maine was destroyed on top of this, Hearst needed no actual evidence to accuse the Spanish of firing on one of our battleships. The result of this Yellow Journalism was War.
Of course, decades later, in 1976 US Admiral Hyman Rickover concluded publicly that the fire on the Maine was caused by spontaneous combustion of a coal bunker, a common occurrence in the Ironclads of that time. Thus a long tradition of Yellow Journalism in the lead up to any military action by the US was ushered into by William Randolph Hearst and the New York Journal.
All of this was decades before the same formula was applied with Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction and the exploitation of 9-11 for huge military contractor profits! There was actually a long history of this manufactured consent in the twentieth century. It is only recently it has reached monstrous perfection in both the spheres of the mainstream news media and the Right Wing opinion echo chambers.
During that time a CIA agent named Valerie Plame was outed as such in retaliation for her husband's acts in exposing a supposed sale of yellowcake uranium to Saddam Hussein in Niger as a forgery! The press at the time never made a priority of discovering just who forged these documents and why. Instead, it vilified Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame. It was a member of the Right Wing opinion factory, Robert Novack, who ultimately was shown to be responsible along with I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby for this cowardly petty act.
Also in the run up to the war where New York Times journalist Judith Miller was reporting that Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, vouched for the existence of Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. She used circular logic in verifying facts that came from the same source, Ahmed Chalabi, with the Pentagon. Mr. Chalabi was paid over $2 million dollars of our tax money for intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein during the 90’s and not one piece of information he gave was ever shown to be true.
The poor journalistic standards would be funny to watch at a distance if innocent servicemen and civilians did not pay for these grotesque bungles in the both the Spanish American War and the Iraq War!
Which brings us to the poor news coverage in today’s headlines! Specifically I wish to address the sensationalistic coverage of the Japanese Nuclear Crisis! When we have been in urgent need of information on what has been going on at the reactors themselves, we’ve been given worst-case scenario headlines. And rest assured the subject of potential meltdowns is very serious. When we are given headlines designed to manipulate us with fear it does a disservice to this extremely serious subject!
The pattern that has emerged is an apocalyptic headline or series of headlines, but information in the story itself and from the various international atomic agencies monitoring the situation indicating that the situation is in fact under control although the risk of having a nuclear wasteland on the northeast coast of Japan for the next dozen decades or so is actually very real and needs to be treated as such.
Japanese workers on the ground doing their very best to restore power despite the dangers to themselves personally deserve to have the world know their names and stories. For all the press I’ve seen regarding this incident, I still don’t know one name.
But contrast the headline of this story-“High Radiation in Food,” (http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=178438 Tap Water) with the information actually inside the article- “government spokesman Yukio Edano noted that even if a consumer were to drink the contaminated milk for a year, the radiation level would be the equivalent of one hospital CT scan.”
And contrast the headline- Japan Nuclear Accident Poses Crisis for Worker Safety (http://www.latimes.com/health/la-sci-quake-radiation-workers-20110318,0,5659183.story) with the words “That level of exposure raises the chances that workers will eventually die of cancer by 1 percentage point, according to John Boice, a cancer epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University and radiation safety expert.” Although the text of the article rightly gives credit to the men who are spent their time drilling and training for such an emergency, you wouldn’t know it from the headlines. Even in the article itself they admit –“Experts are focusing their concern on nuclear workers because the general population's exposure to radiation around the Fukushima Daiichi plant has so far been minimal.”
They don’t specify who the “experts” in question are. It smacks of the sleazy “some say” technique at Fox News. That technique is a shortcut for the editor to insert his own opinion into the story when they use words like that and don’t come clean about just who the experts are and who the Some is in “some say”!
And this is the Mainstream News media! The hacks who infest marginal information outlets have been much worse. For example, this website, economiccollapse.com (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/27-signs-that-the-nuclear-crisis-in-japan-is-much-worse-than-either-the-mainstream-media-or-the-japanese-government-have-been-telling-us) citing no direct sources says that “We are not just talking about a repeat of Chernobyl.We are possibly talking about "many Chernobyls". The author then proceeds to link to every panicking news story he can find.
It is the exact opposite of the approach taken by Voice of America’s non sensational but nonetheless accurate story-
(http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Japan-Continues-Efforts-to-Cool-Quake-Damaged-Reactors-at-Nuclear-Plant-118226759.html)
Those people in the hack story’s links that where evacuating by air where actually exposing themselves to more radiation than if they were staying put! Last paragraph of the article says..."observers call the radiation fears by those in Tokyo an overreaction, noting those returning home overseas would be exposed to higher levels during the high-altitude flights than if they stayed put."
Oh and if you are actually concerned about nuclear plants and radiation here stateside to the point where you are using this crisis to reevaluate our existing nuclear plants pleas keep in mind that coal ash produces more radioactivity than nuclear plants! http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste . Not to worry, If Massey Energy’s Don Blankenship can get away with safety violations and a mine collapse he’s going to continue to fill our skies with more radiation than this Japanese crisis produced for years to come!
Although as of this writing the crisis seems to be under control, it does seem worth noting that these were 40 year old reactors due for decommission and they endured a 8.9 earthquake, a tsunami, hydrogen explosions without a meltdown. And that was in no small part due to the courage and sacrifice of the well-trained workers who risked an early death in order to avoid that meltdown!
When news editors follow the motto “If it bleeds, it leads” or even worse have an axe to grind, they shame their profession and scare the public needlessly. In the case of the Spanish American and Iraqi Wars, it cost servicemen their lives. In this case we are right on the verge of another military action (we don’t follow the Constitution and have Congress declare war anymore!) Whether or not you agree with our participation in this UN action against Ghaddafi, you must admit that it serves the purpose of diverting our attention from the sensationalist panicking coverage of a serious event in Japan.
Personally I find it to be a cowardly maneuver to scare us while misinforming us and then change the subject!
Hitler once said, “The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.” It is similar with that tool of the state and industry, propaganda. In an age where Yellow Journalism is the norm, too many otherwise good journalists and editors give in to the temptation to-“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.” (Another Hitler quote which we see the modern proof of nightly in Beltway Talking Points on Fox News and AM Talk radio)
The mainstream media’s recent coverage of the Japanese Nuke Crisis has proved itself to be no better. But it need not stay this way!
William R. Hearst’s main rival, Joseph Pulitzer, indulged in Yellow Journalism as well. But he eventually renounced it and turned his New York World into a model standard for journalistic excellence.
Come back to us Joseph Pulitzer, we need you! At the very least, the standards you inspired need to return!
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