Two final articles, from different writers at The Register, on the Fukushima nuclear plant.
I can understand why TV newscasts would do such a thing (for those living under a rock, they’ve tried to present it as a disaster of epic proportions, though in reality it was just a minor footnote to the true disaster of the earthquake and tsunami), and though I haven’t seen many newspapers on the subject, I suspect they’re just as bad. The reason, summed up to one word: ratings.
News flash for you, newscasters: deliberately misrepresenting the news like that isn’t going to get you more viewers in the long run. There’s a reason that people are increasingly getting their news from sources like the Internet, and this will just serve to drive them away faster.
Maybe short-term ratings boosts are all they can hope for these days? If so, I’d definitely be shorting stock in TV newscasters.
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I agree, when news organizations make extreme claims, backed by little to no real scientific evidence, it spreads fear and lies, and hurts us as a society. At the same time, I’ve noticed that the articles in The Register tend to do the same thing. Even the two you have linked to above are guilty of the exact thing they are arguing against. Both make bold claims about the effects of radiation and the safety of nuclear production while offering little or no references to any scientific source to back their assertions. Furthermore, to make grand, sweeping future predictions such as “nobody has suffered or will suffer any radiological health consequences” is simply bad journalism.
I have found that the articles I’ve read at The Register are guilty of the same opinion-based and generalizing reporting that other news media are accused of, and in some ways it makes sense. Just as mainstream news organizations try to get ratings with their reporting, internet-based organizations do the same in the attempt to get visitors to their site in order to increase page ad revenue. In the end, they both have the same objective, to attract viewers, and both will often stoop to the same tactics to do so.
The two I linked to didn’t go into those claims because The Register (among other places) had already covered that in excruciating detail. The articles listed at the bottom of this one pretty much cover their coverage.
The Register certainly isn’t perfect, but their coverage of Fukushima was a lot more detailed, and accurate (as far as I, with an interested layman’s knowledge of the science, can tell), than anything on TV.