Partial meltdown, full meltdown, core meltdown: The operative word for the malfunctioning media is “meltdown.” Nuclear meltdown. There is no grand conspiracy, as suggested by Glenn Beck, in mainstream media’s coverage of the earthquake in Japan, only unadorned stupidity. Most media members have not been schooled in the craft of old-fashioned journalism, but in activism. To them, every news story becomes, reflexively, a cause; a reason to promote “awareness,” rather than tell the whole story without zeroing-in on appealing aspects of it. That so many of these outlets settled on the identical front-page lede is indicative of the unanimity in their thinking, of group-think. But, if you suggested to CNN’s Alpha Female Anderson Cooper that an exclusive focus on an angle in a story is itself evidence of bias, you’d just confuse this saccharine simpleton.
To be fair to the next newspapers, they show more fidelity to the truth by referring to “blasts” and “explosions,” rather than end-of-days scenarios:
USAToday: “Explosion rocks Japan nuclear plant”
BBC: “New blast at Japan nuclear plant”
The Washington Times: “Radiation leaks are feared following third a third explosion rocked one of Japan’s three crippled nuclear reactors.”
The following, however, is standard fare:
PBS: “Post-Quake Japan Faces Nuclear Threat”
NYT: “Japan Faces Potential Nuclear Disaster as Radiation Levels Rise”
Spiegel Online: “Fukushima Marks the End of the Nuclear Era”
Buried inside one NYT report was a less overheated tidbit: “To date, even during the four-day crisis in Japan that amounts to the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, workers had managed to avoid a breach of a containment vessel and had limited releases of radioactive steam to relatively low levels.”
As a consequence, we have not seen nearly enough footage of how impressively the Japanese people are coping; how stoical and courageous they appear in interviews. When CNN’s international correspondent alluded to “scenes of hardship,” the camera cut to a shelter. The images were heartbreaking, to be sure. But, unlike those taken during Katrina, they gave hope. One saw rows of neatly laid-out mats. The elderly were lying down and were snugly tucked in clean blankets. Kids, faces covered with masks, were sweeping the floors industriously.
In other footage, rows of people snaked around the neighborhood as they waited to purchase food and water. No looting and no stealing had been reported. Interviewed, the queuing individuals were grief-struck, but they held it together. To me, this is remarkable. Nobody was screaming for government aid, either.
I’d like to know more about how well the Japanese rescuers are doing. Or how supplies are holding up. But, I guess we are, to an extent, at the mercies of the one-track minded media collective.
Oh yes, I’ve seen quite a few interviews with American experts on the ground … in the USA. “It’s way past Three Mile Island already,’ said physicist Frank von Hippel. ‘The biggest risk now is that the core really melts down and you have a steam explosion.'”
Where exactly was Professor von Hippel situated? At Princeton, New Jersey.
Far fewer have been the interviews with Japanese men and women at ground zero.
UPDATE I (March 15): Some sanity (via Steve Horwitz on Facebook).
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UPDATE II (March 16): “Japan Does Not Face Another Chernobyl.” Apparently “the sales of Geiger counters and potassium iodide supplements that can block some radiation have surged nationwide since Friday, fueled by concerns among some Americans that radiation released from Japanese nuclear plants could spread to the United States.” (Seattle Time)
I’m speechless. Doesn’t happen often. I consider myself on the ball when it comes to health hazards. Come six months, and the dentist and I have our perennial quibble. He wants to X-ray me, I say, “Unless you find something untoward during the exam, your full, refundable, set of X-rays is an event that comes around only every five years.
I wash fruit and veg, down to the berry and the grape, with soapy water; have done so for decades, in order to reduce the ingestion of pesticides. I’m the Howard Hughes of hygiene; I don’t go anywhere without my wet ones. But what I hear from the media and the masses about radiation wafting over from Japan is pure insanity. I don’t heed a word. It’s a shame that America’s journalists get to award themselves for heroism and journalism. These people are stupid sickos. I read at Larry Auster’s that liberals are crazy because they are slaves to tolerance. No; their state of apoplexy comes from their irrationality.
UPDATE III (March 16): Ann Coulter issues a “glowing report on radiation”: “Although it is hardly a settled scientific fact that excess radiation is a health benefit, there’s certainly evidence that it decreases the risk of some cancers – and there are plenty of scientists willing to say so. But Jenny McCarthy’s vaccine theories get more press than Harvard physics professors’ studies on the potential benefits of radiation. (And they say conservatives are anti-science!)”