Five of the worst

Sensationalism is not unheard of in the media, but the coverage of recent events in Japan has thrown up some particularly striking examples of irresponsible and uninformed reporting. And it’s not just the red tops. Let’s take a look at some of the worst offenders (thanks, Journalist Wall of Shame).

UN predicts nuclear plume could hit US by Friday
News source
The Daily Mail
Date
17 March 2011
What’s the beef?
This headline for a start – the idea of a “nuclear plume” “hitting” anywhere is terrifying. Oh, wait, though, “the U.S. Nuclear Regulator Commission said it expected no harmful levels of radiation would reach the U.S. from Japan given the thousands of miles between the two countries.” Thanks for clearing that up. Several paragraphs in. The piece also claims that “some experts say the country has 48 hours to avoid ‘another Chernobyl’” but neither the experts’ names nor their credentials are made clear. It transpires that Thierry Charles of France’s Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety made the comments. His assessment, as we know now (and actual experts knew at the time), was wholly inaccurate.
Irresponsibility index
Misleading, sensationalist, draws on Chernobyl (7/10)

Japon: les kamikazes du nucléaire sacrifient leur vie
News source
Le Figaro
Date
15 March 2011
What’s the beef?
Using a phrase associated with WWII suicide bombers to describe members of the Japanese Self-Defence Forces tackling the escalating situation in Fukushima is deeply insensitive and lazily based on dated stereotypes.
Irresponsibility index
This piece sings the praise of its subjects, but seriously, nuclear kamikaze? What next, atomic samurai? (7/10)

Explosion could send contamination to Ireland
News source
The Irish Independent
Date
19 March 2011
What’s the beef?
Outrageous fear-mongering here. The writer bases his story on an almost entirely impossible scenario in which an explosion expels radioactive material 30,000 feet into the air.
Irresponsibility index
Forehead-slappingly bad journalism (8/10)

Tests show low-level radiation on US flights from Japan
News source
CNN
Date
17 March
What’s the beef?
This is particularly insidious because an incident not normally newsworthy (heightened radiation recorded on a plane) is reported with a scary headline merely for attention. The piece ends with an American Airlines spokesman confirming the “pretty high certainty that [the radiation reading] was related to a medical shipment headed to Mexico.”
Irresponsibility index
Printed to make readers afraid (9/10)

Japanese earthquake might be a message from God (via Huffington Post)
News source
The Glenn Beck Program
Date
14 March
What’s the beef?
This is the beef



Irresponsibility index
Glenn Beck is literally insane (10/10)

The C word

There's been a lot of irresponsible coverage of the ongoing situation at Fukushima Daiichi in the media, with the C word being bandied about quite a bit.

John Beddington, the UK's chief scientific officer had this to say earlier (via The Guardian):

[Even] if you then couple that with the worst possible weather situation ie prevailing weather taking radioactive material in the direction of greater Tokyo and you had maybe rainfall which would bring the radioactive material down - do we have a problem? The answer is unequivocally no. Absolutely no issue. The problems are within 30km of the reactor.

And to give you a flavour for that, when Chernobyl had a massive fire at the graphite core, material was going up not just 500m but to 30,000ft. It was lasting not for the odd hout or so but lasted months, and that was putting nuclear radioactive material up into the upper atmosphere for a very long period of time. But even in the case of Chernobyl, the exclusion zone that they had was about 30km. And in that exclusion zone, outside that, there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate people had problems from the radiation. The problems with Chernobyl were people were continuing to drink the water, continuing to eat vegetables and so on and that was where the problems came from. That's not going to be the case here.

So what I would really re-emphasise is that this is very problematic for the area and the immediate vicinity and one has to have concerns for the people working there. Beyond that 20km or 30km, it's really not an issue for health.

Fox News mistakenly identifies Tokyo nightclub as nuclear plant

Great job, Fox News.

Siobhán Bell

I'm not usually one to link to the Indo website, but this article concerns Siobhán Bell, who is here in Japan on the same teaching programme as I am. She was in Sendai City when the tsunami hit and was lucky to survive - her experience must have been terrifying.

Five days on

When news broke on Saturday that an earthquake had struck off the east coast of Japan, the impression I got was that some damage had been done but things would set themselves straight in a few days. Of course, as it transpired, this was not the case.

The full extent of the damage caused by the resulting tsunami that hit the north west coast of Honshu becomes clearer every day as the official death toll rises (as I write, it stands at over 4,000).

Further compounding the misery of the Japanese is the escalating situation at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, with fears that several reactors may have suffered partial fuel melt.

I live in Fukuoka, a prefecture roughly 1,000 km away from Fukushima. There has been talk of widespread stockpiling of food in anticipation of a nuclear crisis, but I never expected it as far away as this.

Of course, sights such as this are more indicative of public concern than any actual threat posed (and, admittedly, at this supermarket only a few shelves, originally containing instant noodles, were empty). It's certainly unsettling, though.