Making mountains out of meltdowns (in Japan)
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More and more of this has got even more to do with mass hysteria and panic. Even the World Health Organisation has made a statement that there is very little to worry about.
The problem with the press is that they haven't a clue how to report a massive humanitarian crisis, because what sells papers isn't news that eight thousand people are already confirmed dead and 12,000 are still missing, but what sells papers to the liberal masses in the west is an impending nuclear disaster caused not by nature but by people, and this simply isn't true.
I actually find it quite disgusting that in a liberal paper such as the Guardian here in the UK, has mentioned nothing of the humanitarian crisis, just pages upon pages of updates on the reactor.
It makes me very upset. So upset that I'm quite happy to eat food that has been labeled as 'contaminated' just to prove a point. In fact, in order to become affected with radiation, you would have to eat vast proportions of leafy vegetable for at least a year, every day. The same goes for drinking water. The Japanese obsession with these face
masks doesn't improve perceptions either. -
[flash=600,400:ymsrl8dm]http://www.youtube.com/v/CsDomUQ-fYM[/flash:ymsrl8dm]
Crazy!!
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Doesn't she have cancer? If so, that may be contributing to her fear.
The tons of water they poured into the reactors have sent 2 workers to the hospital. I'll bet some of this water found its way into the adjacent ocean along with the radioactive iodine in the smoke.
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I never saw her before this, but on seeing this again (it was on the Daily Show), I wonder if she wasn't playing along as an outlandish devil's advocate for the pervasive ignorance.
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@honoluludesktop said:
The tons of water they poured into the reactors have sent 2 workers to the hospital.
I think you have to be very careful how a news item like that is interpreted.
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@unknownuser said:
but what sells papers to the liberal masses in the west is an impending nuclear disaster caused not by nature but by people
@unknownuser said:
How many other "Glenn Beck"'s are you Americans hiding??
So what is it?, liberal or conservative?
Beck is an extreme conservative, yet you cite the liberals as the problem.
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@solo said:
Crazy!!
'Thick' more like!
How many other "Glenn Beck"'s are you Americans hiding??
Someone should give her a reality check about the radiation that is emitted every single day from our very own sun!
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neither. This is sensationalism. It can be both.
edit; Pete, I should point out that I was referring to the UK when I mentioned papers.
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The true problem is the 24 hour news cycle IMO.
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Here is the news post. NHK is the Japanese version of "Voice of America".
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@tfdesign said:
@honoluludesktop said:
The tons of water they poured into the reactors have sent 2 workers to the hospital.
I think you have to be very careful how a news item like that is interpreted. :idea:
Well, 3 workers walked in the water that had been poured into one of the reactor's building, and 2 were found with potential radiation burns. The one that wasn't burned, had his shoes protected from getting soaked.
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@solo said:
The true problem is the 24 hour news cycle IMO.
Well we have 24 hour news too. It's pretty bad ('bad' as in it just repeats the same thing over and over again), but nowhere near as awful as that.
The last series of HBO's The Wire was a good reminder of how low media can go in order to sell papers. Although fictional, I think The Wire captured quite a good perspective into perceiving how some may portray the news in order to hold on to an audience, and thus regaining viewing figures that keep those 'journalists' in a job.
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@honoluludesktop said:
Well, 3 workers walked in the water that had been poured into one of the reactor's building, and 2 were found with potential radiation burns. The one that wasn't burned, had his shoes protected from getting soaked.
Like I said, it's all in the way the news is portrayed (like for eg sensationalism etc)
@unknownuser said:
The director of the institute, Makoto Akashi, says the 2 workers should be able to carry on with their daily lives without discomfort. He added the 3 workers will be discharged early next week.
So what kind of burns are we talking here? I mean plain hot water burns too- and those can be equally nasty and painful even fatal.
What about this article in the same newspaper?
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/26_22.html
Do people pay attention to that? Or is it just not interesting enough? Not enough science fiction?
Sometimes I think the British Dr Who series has a lot to answer for!
[flash=425,344:2qq5nrw8]http://www.youtube.com/v/jCOPyK5F2II?fs=1&hl=en_GB&fs=1&&[/flash:2qq5nrw8]
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So, you would swim in the ocean next to the plant?-)
Did you consider the source of the news? As I said, NHK is the "Voice of America" of Japan. One of their normal functions is to increase tourism to Japan.
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@honoluludesktop said:
So, you would swim in the ocean next to the plant?-)
Did you consider the source of the news? As I said, NHK is the "Voice of America" of Japan. One of their normal functions is to increase tourism to Japan.
Just give me some toxic spinich and I'll boil it up and eat it in front of the millions of other doomongers on YouTube. And yes, pay for me to fly to Japan, and I'll happily swim around the reactor!
If the paper's function is to increase tourism in Japan, then they should all be fired! But I suspect in the land of the rising iPad, kindle and Android, you're just witnessing yet another newspaper clambering for attention to 'up' the sales revenue.
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It's not a newspaper, just read the link.
Tell you what. Go to Japan, swim in the ocean next to the reactor, submit proof, and I will reimburse you:-)
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Dear Tom,
Just in case you haven't already seen this,
Viewpoint: We should stop running away from radiation
A sea-change is needed in attitudes to radiation, argues Oxford University physicist Wade Allison.
BBC News (www.bbc.co.uk)
Extract from article:
People worry about radiation because they cannot feel it. However, nature has a solution - in recent years it has been found that living cells replace and mend themselves in various ways to recover from a dose of radiation.
These clever mechanisms kick in within hours and rarely fail, except when they are overloaded - as at Chernobyl, where most of the emergency workers who received a dose greater than 4,000 mSv over a few hours died within weeks.
However, patients receiving a course of radiotherapy usually get a dose of more than 20,000 mSv to vital healthy tissue close to the treated tumour. This tissue survives only because the treatment is spread over many days giving healthy cells time for repair or replacement.
In this way, many patients get to enjoy further rewarding years of life, even after many vital organs have received the equivalent of more than 20,000 years' dose at the above internationally recommended annual limit - which makes this limit unreasonable.
A sea-change is needed in our attitude to radiation, starting with education and public information.
End extract.
Regards,
Bob -
@honoluludesktop said:
It's not a newspaper, just read the link.
So it's a TV broadcasting station? So what's the difference? Whether it's a newspaper or a television station, it has to create revenue- most probably by statistics that are fed to advertising agencies, or the government (if it's funded by the latter. NHK have still to make money! If you an outside syndication company, it highly likely that this kind of website will be one of you first ports of call (especially like in the case of that so-called journalist Pete posted, you are a 'lazy' journalist, or one who isn't prepared to go to the affected site and find out for themselves- in fact all the BBC journalists who are covering the humanitarian crisis in the north, are getting very little airplay elsewhere). Spread a whole load of sensationalist headlines across the top of the page, and you increase your likelihood of chances that you receive more hits.
I bet you even overlooked the following story on another page of the same website about a man who dies of carbon monoxide poisoning in his own van while cueing for petrol at one of the many shut petrol stations?
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/27_15.html
@unknownuser said:
Japanese police say so far 10,489 people have been confirmed dead and more than 16,600 are missing after the March 11th earthquake and tsunami that hit northeastern Japan.
Amount of dead from the Tsunami has risen again... 10,000 and counting... Not one yet dead from radioactivity......
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/27_05.html
Please. I used to lecture in media at a nearby university. I also used to freelance for newspapers in London, in the early 1990's. I know how these people work. As a means of proof, please look at the photo attached. This photo is one of many taken, by me at Gatwick Airport 1991, as a commission from Keith Dobney, assistant picture editor at The Independent newspaper in London, England. I know what I am talking about!
@honoluludesktop said:
Tell you what. Go to Japan, swim in the ocean next to the reactor, submit proof, and I will reimburse you:-)
No. You're bluffing. You pay me up front.
I don't think you really know how serious I am. Anyhow, you've already lost the argument, because you know that it would be far more likely that I could, and would, be able to execute the cheapest and most cost effective option, by eating 'contaminated' spinach. But no, that still isn't good enough!
In the same spirit of Rich O'Brien (Rich being a "mad Irishman", I am a "mad Englishman". You are playing with fire here!) Like I have already explained, I am quite prepared to swim around next to the reactor in the sea, but you have to pay up front all the occurring charges- including dealing with the press, the security, working with the Japanese police. I'm confident that you speak Japanese? I also demand that a (small) powered boat is provided with trained rescuers (and divers, just in case I get into trouble in water). There are jellyfish as well as probably sharks. So we would need to hire a cage that i can swim in, as well as an appropriate anti-predetor swim suit.... Then there are the hotel costs, the insurance costs for all the equipment, and last of all- you need to deal with the government- all that PR etc. AND it's freezing cold there right now (not that this will bother me very much).
There, my cards are on the table, but you must pay upfront, because otherwise all you are doing is playing a game with me (read "Games People Play; The Psychology of Human Relationships" by Eric Berne, the Transactional Analysis guru). I am a Man. Are you a Man, or a mouse?
But to be honest the chances that this would actually happen are pretty slim- because radioactive or not, I highly suspect that even someone in a small fishing vessel wouldn't even be allowed anywhere near a massive central power station on safety grounds. BUT in true Greenpeace tradition (and yes, I've also worked with Greenpeace Publications, and one of my old school chums, Alan Baker, masterminding all of those high profile marketing stunts performed by Greenpeace, of people falling out of helicopters onto skyscrapers- the Piper-Alpha oil platform was one of Alan's most famous stunts, as featured a while back on British TV), if you want to set it up for me, I'll do it.
And by the time you've worked all that out, a couple of thousand more innocent tsunami victims, children included, will have been pulled out of the rubble.
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@watkins said:
A sea-change is needed in our attitude to radiation, starting with education and public information.
Good find! Thanks for that.
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So Tom, if your arguments are:
The press manipulates, therefore can't be trusted. I would agree, and like to add that the information is manipulated by every source as it is disseminated.
Or if it is:
The emphasis has been taken off the massive human disaster because that is not what will increase readers or viewers, whereas perceived impending disaster will. Then again I agree.
Or even if you argue that:
Under normal circumstances it can be shown that the nuclear power industry has cause very few deaths to date, in comparison to many other similar industries and therefore, in that light it can be shown to be safe. Well,OK
Or even:
That the events that took place to cause this are extreme, and have a low probability of repetition.
But:
I feel you lose credibility if you start to put forward the premise that exposure to radiation, particularly the radiation that could potentially leak from this, or any other nuclear based power plant, is safe and therefore of no concern.
You will have to spin doctor like mad to get me to agree to that.
(should I add "without prejudice"
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