Friday 18 March 2011

Good Journalism, Bad Journalism

"Provided that cooling can be continued, the pumps will gradually win the battle with the cores as the residual decay reactions in the rods die slowly away..." "...it is looking more and more probable that the death and injury toll from the Fukushima quake strike will be limited to the one worker killed in a crane accident and others hurt by the quake and subsequent explosions at the site, perhaps with some very minimal long-term radiation effects among site workers."
That's Lewis Page writing for The Register today. Unlike other media outlets, El Reg has been brilliant throughout this unfortunate episode which now appears to be drawing to a close - long on accurate information, thoughtfulness and context, short on bullshit scaremongering. Compare with this little bit of insidious crap in the TT's headliner imported from AFP today:
"The official toll of the dead and missing from the twin disasters, which pulverized the northeast coast, was approaching 15,000, police said, as aftershocks continued to rattle a jittery nation."
Excuse me? The death toll from the "twin disasters"? That is nothing but a cowardly and dishonest attempt to insinuate that the crisis at Fukushima has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of people - which is not, in point of fact, the case at all. What sort of person would want to stoop so low as that?

2 comments:

  1. Mike, the twin disasters are the earthquake and tsunami. It is not referring to the nuclear incident. The editors could perhaps do a better job of separating discussion of the earthquake and tsunami from the nuclear incident, but you have misread the statement.

    ReplyDelete

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