{"id":1724,"date":"2011-03-17T21:18:25","date_gmt":"2011-03-17T12:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2011-03-17\/1724"},"modified":"2011-03-17T21:18:25","modified_gmt":"2011-03-17T12:18:25","slug":"scaremongering-in-the-western-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2011-03-17\/1724","title":{"rendered":"Scaremongering in the Western Press"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\nNOTE<\/b>: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In an AP story by Eric Talmadge and Mari Yamaguchi, “Japanese choppers dump water on stricken reactor<\/a>”,\nthe second paragraph starts with<\/p>\n\n

“While the choppers flew combat-style missions to dump batch after batch of seawater onto a stricken<\/span> reactor, ...<\/b>”<\/div>\n\n

This “reporting” by Talmadge and Yamaguchi is a perfect<\/span> example of the\nwild sensationalism I've seen in the US media about the situation in Japan. The depth<\/span> and breadth of the destruction can't possibly be sensationalized\nbecause it's already unimaginable, but everything else seems to be looked\nat in the US press in the most exaggerated, dire way possible.<\/p>\n\n

In what world is dropping water with fire-fighting equipment a\n“combat-style mission” rather than a “firefighting-style mission”? In a world<\/span> where you want to twist reality for maximum dramatic effect. In what world<\/span> is “batch after batch” a reasonable<\/span> reference to “four loads of water\nover the course of ten minutes”? The same.<\/p>\n\n

Time and again I see article and photos that try to fan the flames of\npanic, showing photos of empty store shelves and gas-mask wearing workers\nas if that's a common<\/span> sight around Japan. As far as<\/span> I can<\/span> tell from the\ndomestic news, the gas-mask wearing workers are only in areas associated\nwith the reactors and gateway areas for evacuees. Empty store shelves are\nmore common in the fringe of the areas of devastation, and likely in areas\nwhere a lot<\/span> of people are traveling (in the same way that the convenience store\nnear my place in Kyoto has its shelves stripped bare numerous times throughout\nthe day on a weekend<\/span> during cherry-blossom season).<\/p>\n\n

For what it's worth, I've seen no effect of any of this here in Kyoto,\nand wouldn't even know about the earthquake and tsunami and reactor woes if\nit weren't for the news.<\/p>\n\n

The article\n“Japan Earthquake and the Irresponsible Foreign Media<\/a>”\nby Richard Graham says it well, after watching the events unfold in a horrific<\/span> but orderly manner on domestic TV....<\/p>\n\n

\n“then I switched<\/span> across to the BBC and oh my goodness, what a contrast!<\/span> Make no wonder everyone overseas was panicking. Forget any pretense of informative news, this was purely emotionally driven exaggeration on the part of the BBC. Whilst Japanese news was giving out information about what areas were affected by what size waves, the BBC was giving voice overs like “death approaches by the sea.” They reshowed the footage of Sendai from when the quake hit but this time with voice overs like “blinded with panic not knowing where to turn”<\/i><\/div>\n\n

Another example is a video currently featured on the Y! Front Page about\na pair<\/span> of dogs in the rubble, behind a link<\/span> “heartbreaking\nvideo<\/a><\/b>”. The video<\/span> shows a mud<\/span>-caked scruffy dog walking to\nanother dog that lies unmoving, as if dead or asleep. Eventually the\nunmoving dog moves and nuzzles with its mate; the reporter gushes about how\nhappy he is that they're alive, that life endures even in these trying\ntimes. The video<\/span> starts out sad to grab you, but turns into an uplifting\nvideo celebrating life, a bright<\/span> spot in a vast<\/span> expanse of blackness that\nthis earthquake has been. With so many truly sad stories, why does the\nmedia feel the need to manufacture additional ones?<\/p>\n\n

There's so much real news to be reported... the devastation is\nunimaginable. Suffering by the victims is ongoing and intense. Concern for\nthe reactor situation is real (and faith in the government to handle it\nshrinking). There's plenty<\/b> of real news, so why the sensationalism? I understand<\/span> the media will always be a strong<\/span> political agenda (one way or\nthe other) whenever anything nuclear is involved, but again, there's so\nmuch real news to report that they don't need to sink to these tricks.<\/p>\n\n\n

Update March 31<\/span>:<\/b> I found<\/span> this Journalist Wall of Shame<\/a>\nhighlighting some of the more egregious examples of scaremongering.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an AP story by Eric Talmadge and Mari Yamaguchi, \"Japanese choppers dump water on stricken reactor\", the second paragraph starts with<\/p>

This \"reporting\" by Talmadge and Yamaguchi is a perfect example of the wild sensationalism I've seen in the US media about the situation in Japan. The depth and breadth of the destruction can't possibly be sensationalized because it's already unimaginable, but everything else seems to be looked at in the US press in the most exaggerated, dire way possible.<\/p>

In what world is dropping water with fire-fighting equipment a \"combat-style mission\" rather than a \"firefighting-style mission\"? In a [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}