Sensationalism has always been part of the popular media - but Fukushima is a telling and troubling sign of how much the media has changed in fifty years: from an era of scientific optimism to one where it inhabits a world of fantasy - creating a real-time Hollywood disaster movie with a moralising, chivvying message.The narrative doesn't come from the luminiferous aether, it comes from a shared set of assumptions by the members of the MSM. Those shared assumptions are all grounded in a dogmatic leftist view of the world, which means that the narrative runs in support of that world view.
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The Fukushima situation has yet to cause any measurable radiological health effects, and workers at the site were far less hard hit by the quake, tsunami and related events than just about anyone in the disaster zone, but nonetheless the nuclear story rapidly eclipsed the tens of thousands killed directly by the quake. TV's reaction to the crisis shows how at odds it is with a more rational audience, those who know something about radiation, its consequences, and the human body's capacity to absorb it and recover from it. The crisis for the media is that thanks to the internet, we can now all bypass these conduits for superstition and stupidity.
And so we see stories hysterically hyped - the price of gas under the Bush administration, the "jobless recovery" under the Bush administration, the "war crimes at Guantanamo" under the Bush administration. We also see a curious lack of any notice for some stories - the price of gas under the Obama administration, the "jobless recovery" under the Obama administration, the "war crimes at Guantanamo" under the Obama administration. That's the narrative.
But this time, we see the narrative get wedged. Nobody has died at Fukushima. Nobody. And yet we get full frontal hysteria from the Talking Heads.
We don't often get a situation that is so clarifying. In the other examples above, there's room for the media to spin - some stories are important, others less so, context and nuance count. We all know that this is low caliber nonsense, but Fukushima is different.
It's different because the media was just plain wrong on the story, and has lost all sense of context or nuance. You want nuance? Tens of thousands are dead, with no mention.
And so, remember: the more important the story, the less trustworthy the media will be. The less important the story - local news, weather, sports scores - the more you can rely on them.
9 comments:
Great! Except...every time I've been featured in a (local, unimportant) news story, they got significant, important-to-me details wrong. And that's largely true of everyone I know as well...
I have to agree with Aretae about local news, at least so far as print goes. I've been quoted 2-3 times in local newspapers for what amounts to "human interest" pieces, and I've yet to see them get even the simplest quote correct. Thus, I tend to be rather suspicious of quotes in print - it's just too easy to omit a word here, add a word there, and suddenly you have an entirely different statement.
Another agreement with Aretae. When my rocket test exploded back in January, the local news article, quite amazingly, had every single detail about the rocket completely wrong. I'm surprised they called the little start-up space company by it's real name and didn't call it NASA.
"Nobody has died at Fukushima."
Yet.
But as much radioactivity as there is floating around that place, and (as far as I can tell) no functional cooling/containment systems on the spent-fuel storage pools, I expect that any worker who has more than a couple of days of total time on-site is a dead man walking.
That said, however, I tend to agree with your primary point, which is that anything you see in the mainstream media is not reliable.
And so, remember: the more important the story, the less trustworthy the media will be. The less important the story - local news, weather, sports scores - the more you can rely on them.
I disagree. The local people are mostly driven by the same agenda as the national people. Weather forecasting? Still a joke. Sports scores? Scores yes, anything else, no. Local news? It's as Aratae says, I've never seen or read a story about any incident in which I've been involved where the pertinent facts of the story were even close.
Sensationalism sells laundry detergent, cars, and insurance, facts don't.
Actually, three have died.. Caused by the tsunami. None have died (yet) from radiation (and, if the Japanese are to be believed, are likely to).
"If it bleeds, it leads".
I have done some tag along freelance photography in my "yout", and have never been around any story, anywhere, in which the paper got every detail right.
These were all local, low interest stories: fishing contests, a "haunted house" put on by a youth group, things that they devoted space too, but didn't have any big party agenda. Things the media doesn't care too much about.
They consistently got everything wrong.
I stopped believing the media could get anything right over twenty years ago. The Narrative was always more important than the facts.
I stopped believing the media could get anything right, ever ... hm, musta been about a dozen years ago now. A tornado ripped through a mile or so south of where I was living at the time. It turned about thirty houses into matchsticks, and IIRC one person was killed. All of the thirty houses destroyed were in a very high class suburb and belonged to very rich white homeowners. Well, all except one. Guess which one house and family starred in all the network newscasts about the tornado?
While all eyes and eears are turned to nuke stories, has anyone heard mention of the death toll from hydro Electric?
Google "Vajont" for something to shut the greens up with.
I can't remember whether it was strictly hydro or more for water supply, but there are some impressive pictures to be found of the Teton dam failure in progress as well. $1B damage, in 1976 dollars too.
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