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Friday 3 June 2011

Fukushima what the BBC reports and what it does not

The BBC love to report any negative news arising from the tsunami hitting the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. Search for Fukushima on the BBC news website and there are lots of articles many insinuating that the plant suffered more than has been admitted or just scaremongering. What you will not find is any mention of the IAEA's interim report on the Fukushima incident pdf here. Here are some extracts that I would have thought that an unbiased news organisation would want to report:
'The expert team made several preliminary findings and lessons learned, including:

* Japan's response to the nuclear accident has been exemplary, particularly illustrated by the dedicated, determined and expert staff working under exceptional circumstances;
* Japan's long-term response, including the evacuation of the area around stricken reactors, has been impressive and well organized. A suitable and timely follow-up programme on public and worker exposures and health monitoring would be beneficial;

...

To date no health effects have been reported in any person as a result of radiation exposure from the nuclear accident.'
It seems that the BBC are a little put out that despite a major earthquake and resultant tsunami that killed tens of thousands of Japanese people, the nuclear plant at Fukushima did not kill many more. In fact whilst the nuclear fuel rods did melt, the resultant radiation was largely contained in the reactors as it was designed to be. There were mass evacuations and the IAEA say that these were 'hard to justify on safety grounds'. They were easy to justify on the grounds that the word radiation causes panic amongst the unscientific majority.

The BBC are not alone in this love of disasters and reporting just bad news BUT they are meant to be unbiased, they are meant to report all the news not just that which fits their world view AND most importantly I am forced to pay for their news reporting so I should be able to hold them to account.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Japanese response was all the more impressive when one consideres it was being delivered in the aftermath of the devestating tsunami which had destroyed much of the road system and other vital infrastructure components as well as having to deal with the huge and tragic scale of the loss of life.