The BBC have gone nuclear over…erm, the nuclear problems at Fukushima. Today has been busy constructing an agenda that the Japanese Government “lies” (according to Roger Harradin) and is “blase” (according to James Naughtie) about nuclear problems. Undoubtedly the crisis at Fukushima has gotten worse and that is fair comment but the BBC seems determined to extend this into some sort of general attack on nuclear energy. I have to say that one’s natural sympathy with the Japanese victims of the tsunami is now being eclipsed by anger about the BBC’s overt manipulation of the Nuclear power plant issue. Not reporting – editorialising and always following a clear agenda.
IT’S CHERNOBYL ALL OVER AGAIN!
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Do do think the Japanese are too busy to fawn over the BBC and that’s why they are miffed?
I think you are right.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8383473/Japan-nuclear-crisis-Timeline-of-official-statements.html
And the response by our MSM to a government trying to sort an epic unfolding disaster seems more pique at not getting what they want to fill their 24/7 ratings addiction.
Or flying folk out there to clog up comms lines talking to folk back here they could meet in the corridor.
‘Today has been busy constructing an agenda that the Japanese Government “lies”
Is this listed anywhere? It seems extraordinary for a national broadcaster to be rushing around trying to stir up mistrust in another nation’s government whilst they are in the thick of a crisis.
Mind you, harking back to the BBC’s ongoing role in the Libya evac, if they can do it to their own folk, why not others?
Another comment (unverified/opinion but one presumes borne out on iPlayer) that supports a definite narrative at play, and it isn’t ‘help the Japanese people’:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/markurban/2011/03/while_western_politicians_disc.html#P107278943
If there is official skullduggery afoot, yes, nail ’em. But I would suggest the timing is not best now. Unless you are driven by less humanitarian motives.
On topic of Nuclear – Was James Naughtie just really rude to the Japanese guy from Liberal Democratic party talking about nuclear?
Whilst typing this – he is now pursuing the government “lies” line with obvious relish……..
Beeb is on a roll now.
“Features & Analysis
“Nuclear Power
Is it cost-effective and is it really necessary?”
It’s the addition of the word “really” that gives it away. To ask if its necessary is too straightforward. “Yes”. But is it really really really necessary suggests there is an alternative. Its called “bias”
The warmists are in charge at our national broadcaster, they think no-one can see them up to their tricks, and they are contaminating the airwaves with their pro-renewable-sustainable-green propaganda.
Do we really need the BBC?
I saw that article and was going to post about it but what’s the point. The BBC is so large, so powerful, so dominant in the provision of news in the UK that it just gets away with whatever lies and distortions it chooses. The BBC is not reformable so what do we do?
NoS, what is more feasible: expose the bias and restore integrity / abolish the BBC?
LC, we need the BBC to be what it once was 30 odd years ago – a national flag bearer for integrity and impartiality that made us feel extremely proud to be British.
“Nuclear Power is it cost-effective and is it really necessary?”
To which the response to a BBC drone should be
“Yes, of course it is. Come into the real world you moron”.
Another thought I’ve had : I think it’s undeniable that the Japanese are among the most intelligent nations in the world. On that basis, and given their history regarding nuclear weapons, I suggest that they thought long and hard before choosing nuclear power generation. I also suspect that they did so on the basis of good science and economics rather than touchy-feely gaia babble. So, I find it excruciating that the bbc tend to relate to the current situation and the Japanese in general as though they are from some backward African country that has been sold a pup by the wicked West. If the bbc news readers (I can’t bring myself to call them journalists ) were half as intelligent as they like to pretend, they might just be considering why Japan has had nuclear power for so long and appear to be content to continue to use it in the future. And if it’s good for them, why it wouldn’t be good for us.
“…is it cost-effective and is it really necessary?”
Some of the very things we on this blog ask about the BBC all the time!
Given the behaviour of politicians over here, I would be very surprised if they are much different in Japan! Personally, I support nuclear in low-level earthquake zones such as the UK, but it does look like Japan may have taken on more than it can chew.
If the containment vessel really has ruptured in one of the reactors [hard to tell at present if this is just journalism spin], that would be pretty serious since that is the last line of defence against major leaks – let’s hope it is not the one containing plutonium (lethal dose about half a gram)!
Hells Bells. Eammon Holmes on SKY just asked a Prof. on spot if ‘the Western media were over-reacting on a single issue’.
Tactful bloke, but he pretty much said yes. And I just wonder if the thing can become Chernobyl if the likes of the BBC really, really wish hard.
The MSM coverage so far minds me of a bunch of folk squabbling at the scene of a car accident over insurance details or automotive design, whilst the passengers still lie bleeding in the wreckage.
They had a political activist from Greenpeace on News24 in the early hours of the morning. From what I could gather he had no qualifications to comment on nuclear energy, however the graveyard-shift presenter just sat there nodding like the obedient left-wing dog that all BBC presenters are.
ML, an interesting nic.
Personally, I find if there’s one thing as bad as gratuitously taking offence it is gratuitously giving it.
If you went marching around a Muslim area with a placard ‘Mohammed Lovespigs’ as a protest against Islam’s efforts to silence free speech, I would applaud your bravery, but using the anonymity of ‘internetland’ to gratuitously give offence is less than edifying.
It could be construed as a positive name, after all the infidels are described as pigs by many muslim preachers; so this could be taken as a sign that Islam is a religion of love. :-E
I tend to agree that the name is a bit gratuitous really.
How dare you suggest that Mohammed doesn’t love every living being.
You’re nothing but a racist. May Allah have mercy on your soul.
Her has to be anonymous – or the mussies will kill him. And the BBC would applaud. Such is modern Britain.
I continually hear “worst accident since Chernobyl”, which immediately invites a comparison with that disaster. My understanding is that this is a completely different scenario as the nuclear reactors were shut down several days ago and we are therefore dealing with an entirely different type of radiation. This type of radiation has a short life and therefore far less capacity to cause harm before disappearing. Chernobyl on the other hand was still operating at the time of its explosion. Perhaps anyone in the know can confirm or otherwise that my understanding is correct.
To be fair, I did hear an expert on Today this morning saying that the radiation has a short life but this wasn’t followed up in any meaningful way, which it should have been if we are to remain properly informed.
” . . if we are to remain properly informed.”
That’s the last thing the BBC and, as it appears, MSM want. The headlines in the Telegraph and Times – the “quality press” ha! ha! – are as panic inducing, headless chicken running, agenda driven misinformation as Greenpeace could wish for in its wildest dfreams. Despite sensible editorialising and side articles playing down the panic on a scientific basis, the impression (deliberately?) given is of Japan on the verge of a holocaust of nuclear devastation. I know papers have to be sold (unlike the BBC’s hand in your wallet exercise) but to sacrifice truth to sensation is beyond irresponsible
Great point about ‘lurid headlines to sell newspapers’. I thought the whole point of tax funded ‘public service broadcasting’ is that the BBC is immune to these commercial pressures.
The Gramscian cuckoo in the BBC nest is perfectly happy to gobble up press sensationalism when it serves its agenda.
Blimey – even Prof Beddington has confirmed on Today that this is not Chernobyl or anything like Chernobyl. If the worst happens the “meltdown” will not be a nuclear explosion but a temporary increase in radiation locally which would disperse within days if not hours. Beddington said that the proposed evacuation zone of 12 kms) was entirely appropriate. If it’s good enough for one of the world’s uber warmists (and thus one whose scientific credentials re climate are questionable to say the least) to say that this isn’t the end of the world – nor a feature of climate change – I’m provisionally able to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Mind you, an unequivocal statement from one of its speed-dial favourites hasn’t stopped the BBC “it’s worse than Chernobyl” mantra. It’s odd, yet so predictable that, although “the science is in” and there are no genuine – or even less than genuine – scientists and nuclear experts (apart from the graduates in PR at Greenpeace) challenging it (if there were they’d be front and centre on Today) the BBC remains sceptical.
I think the hysteria from the media has made the Fukushima nuclear plant situation into the Japanese equivalent of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The main difference is that the Japanese appear to be behaving in a calm and rational manner, while the bbc in particular can’t contain themselves (pun intended) with their fearmongering. As someone else has mentioned, there have been possibly more than 10,000 deaths due to the Tsumani, surely that’s the horror of what has happened.
And what on earth is Naughty doing in Japan – he is serving no purpose whatsoever, costing us money by being there and adding to the inconvenience of the Japanese, who I would think have better things to do than speak to him.
‘I would think have better things to do than speak to him’
Indeed. Plus I am unsure if he is qualified to return the courtesy even if they do.
More to the point is why is James Naughtie in Japan, what is the purpose of having him sat in Tokyo after a flight to Japan, to talk to experts back in the London office? I see no purpose in having a news anchor there, did we send Bill Turnbull to Chile or Derbyshire to Australia?
I think it is vanity reportage; so they can bore people with their ‘ I was there’ stories, for the rest of their lives.
With the BBc it is not about news, just personalities. They have people like Humphreys, Paxman and that other Labour supporter. The reporter should not matter, his name should not be important. That is why the BBC do not give us “news” its just constant opinion from BBC “fat cats” on ego trips.
Not exclusively to the BBC. It’s called parachute journalism. When a crisis occurs they parachute an ‘experienced’ talking head in and evacuate him immediately afterwards. This means most foreign correspondents have no connections or contacts or background or language or cultural knowledge of the places they are reporting from (these take years to develope) when they pontificate. The crisis remains somehow suspended in the present. No explanation how and why it happened and no follow-up.
Evelyn Waugh’s ‘satire’ of the sensational journalism and foreign correspondence in Abyssinia is still a good guide to parachute journalism.
The stolid and solid reaction of the Japanese is wholly admirable. The pictures on BBC News at 10 last night of an orderly queue (with no police in obvious attendance) outside one of the few supermarkets in the devastated area with supplies says it all. I’m sure, had there been panic or (very) unjapanese displays of emotional incontinence (which in the circs would be more than understandable) the BBC would have filmed and transmitted it pronto.
Also, for some reason, the BBC has decided so far not to send Orla there. On reflection that decision is understandable since there would be no excuse for Orla to dress in her trademark “culturally sensitive” manner. However, I think that we could have relied on Orla – or one of her clones – to imply that, in some way, any failings in the humanitarian response to the tsunami’s effects is the fault of the West (and those pesky Zionists who rule the world). BTW I look forward to news of the usual less than generous outpouring of aid to the stricken Japanese from the Moslem world.
Sky News is the way to go– flicking between that and BBC News I tried to think what it was that is dislikeable about the BBC set-up, then I realised, they’re a middle class liberal elite caste and they know it.
The Sky reporters are no less capable but somehow more human.
Ive met lots of those strident BBC women and they all seem the same and even look the same. They fully know this and as a result have complete contempt for the rest of us.
The Sky News man (unnecessarily) in Tokyo is foolhardy enough to address us without a mask, unlike the even more unnecessary Tittering Coquette on R5 breakfast. She admitted to wearing protection & was obviously counting the minutes until she high tailed it back to the UK – but hey what’s extravagant about flying a couple of dozen BBC folk round the globe?
Given the lifestyle of the average Beeboid, they probably mean a whole different thing when they talk about using ‘protection’.
This is about as shocking an example of BBC bias I’ve ever seen – truly beyond the pale:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12741382
Read it before they change it.
. . and the power “expert” the BBC chooses to quote and picture as he dismisses nuclear energy as too expensive is Benjamin Sovacool http://www.spp.nus.edu.sg/Faculty_Benjamin_K_Sovacool.aspx . Sovacool is the warmist/greenie expert of choice when it comes to analyses of energy. Coincidence or bias? I think I’ll choose bias: the BBC had to trawl the world to come up with this intellectual bimbo.
What absolutely and completely appalls me is that the BBC thinks it can get away with clearly blaming the fall of the Nikkei on nuclear fears, completely and blatantly ignoring the natural catastrophe-sized elephant standing behind it.
This is about as clear propaganda as I’ve ever seen from any source, never mind just the BBC. It is despicable.
Katabasis, I can’t see the bias. Has it been changed?
@hippie it’s this – the title and the strapline:
“Japan’s Nikkei plunges more than 10% on radiation fears”
“Japanese shares have plunged on escalating fears of a radiation leak at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.”
– We’re clearly supposed to come away with the belief that it is the nuclear issue that is driving the crash of the Nikkei, not the fact that Japan has just experienced its worst natural disaster ever.
Hmm, you could have a point.
This from the Mailonline leads me to think so.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/listen_again/default.stm
Does anyone notice a discrepency in these two pieces on the TODAY running order?
0743
As the authorities in Japan try to contain the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, those communities wrecked by the tsunami are beginning their own efforts to pick up the pieces. Our correspondent Alastair Leithead <!– S ILIN –>reports from Minami Sanriku, a town devastated by the disaster.
0810
Explosions at a Japanese nuclear plant have led to radiation levels that can affect human health, a senior official has said. Noriuki Shikata, director of communications for the Japanese prime minister, opposition politician Taro Kono and the UK’s ambassador to Japan, David Warren <!– S ILIN –>comment on the escalating nuclear problem. <!– E ILIN –>
<!– E ILIN –>
I rather suspect its the lefty young BBC interns that right the copy in the small hours, until the grown-ups clock in after breakfast and the stealth edits begin. If they have any sense, the grown-ups check Biased BBC to see what tosh been written while their eye has been off the ball.
The BBC and it’s fellow travellers will always be against human efforts to use our brains and technology to make the best use of the world’s resources. It is the flip side of their belief that it is entirely possible to carry out a complete social re-engineering of humanity to fit the ideal world of their imagination.
Quite bizarre and unreal .
The UK MSM in general, and the BBC in particular, have been salivating for 6 years at the prospect of a repeat of the 2004 tsunami, each seismic incident in the Pacific basin, however minor, being reported with scarcely disguised glee in the expectation that news providers could again occupy centre stage as a consequence of some terrible disaster befalling unfortunates in far off lands.
By now they must be coming in their pants at the news that they not only a have their heartily wished-for replay of 2004, but the delicious possibility of a Three-Mile Island / Chernobyl incident to follow the main course.
They are determined to maintain the high level of breathless speculation so as to drown out questions as to why the massive investment in Tsunami warning systems, which they and all the chattering classes demanded after the 2004 incident, provided no warning or protection for the Japanese.
It is my understanding that Tsunami are not an exclusively Asian phenomenon. If the predicted major earthquake in the Levant (Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Syria) occurs in the Mediterranean a Tsunami may result. It’s not that unusual. A tsunami occurs in the Mediterranean about once every hundred years.
It will catch the BBC completely by surprise. As there is no social engineering aspect they are not interested. But will it effect the ‘peace process’ in Israel/Palestine? 😉
Nineteen coal miners were killed in China a couple of days ago. I can’t find any BBC coverage.
More miners are killed in China’s coal mines every year than the UN’s very unlikely worst case scenario for the final number of Chernobyl deaths.
When did we hear James Naughtie accusing the Chinese regime of being ‘blase’ about this.
We didn’t.
Oh, the irony:
‘Radiation’ text message is fake
A fake text message warning people that radiation from the Fukushima nuclear plant has leaked beyond Japan has been panicking people across Asia. The text message, purporting to come from the BBC, has been circulating around Asian countries since Monday.
It would be good if this could be proved.
The text message may or may not be genuine, it is the BBC reporting that is unquestionably fake.
Just for the record (as the i-Player will record some of this for only seven days):
Naughtie 6.36 am: Now the government insists that the levels of radiation found at a distance from this reactor at the moment and indeed potentially over the next few days are certainly up, but they’re minute in terms of what would present a danger to human health. People are reluctant to believe that I think simply because in these situations they tend not to believe governments, but that does seem to be an accurate picture doesn’t it?
Harrabin: Well to comment on both of those Jim. Firstly, the Japanese nuclear authorities have directly lied in the past about nuclear accidents, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the public were sceptical. But it does seem that radioactivity levels in Tokyo have just marginally increased. You know, we’re all subject to background radiation everyday, then increasing it if we go up in a plane or take an x-ray. So the levels in Toyko, for example, at the moment appear to be elevated, but trivially so.
Naughtie 7.09 …and in the government an intense effort to reassure people that it’s telling the truth about the level of risk they face, an effort that sometimes seems to verge on desperation.
Naughtie 7.18 They’ve seen a government, which has always been extraordinarily blase about this and many people here would say it has misled them in the past about accidents, which is suddenly looking – and frankly I say this absolutely honestly – it looks, if not panic-stricken, certainly extremely concerned about the implication of that.
Naughtie for Today, Clive Myrie for the News Channel and, Lord help us, now showboating Matt Frei (inserting himself into history again, just as he did in Chile). The BBC needs to take a serious look at itself and get a grip.
Somebody help me out here: I’m pretty sure Sky mentioned something about an earthquake and a tidal wave in addition to these problems with nuke plants. Has anyone heard anything about this? It sounds like they could have been pretty dangerous in their own right.
Seriously, if these people had been round during the Great Plague, you’d only ever hear about people dying if they’d tripped over a gravedigger’s shovel and broken their necks.
‘Something about an earthquake and a tidal wave in addition to these problems with nuke plants. Has anyone heard anything about this? It sounds like they could have been pretty dangerous in their own right.’
S’funny (not ‘ha-ha’) ‘cos it’s true 🙁
Make this point across the legions of nuke-rending going across the BBC-controlled Blogosphere, and the mods will have you edited or deleted before you can say “House Rules’ for pointing out there is a crisis and a relief effort, and adding a Red Cross URL as an example of what might be more pressing at the moment.
Just guessing, but I am sure Comic Relief’s will not be so purged from the BBC screens and airwaves.
Or, for that matter any Gaza or Greenpeace ‘front’ if smiled upon by Aunty.
You just need to be… ‘unique’.
I can’t find it now, but I saw a video on the New York Times website yesterday which showed how the current problems are actually due to the fact that the power was out for so long and the plant workers ended up misjudging how to keep the cores cool. Neither the earthquakes nor the tsunami did enough damage to actually harm the reactors by themselves. The problems lie in how they managed the water. They apparently let some of it boil away (if I understood correctly) too soon, or too much of it boil away so there was no longer enough water to keep one of the cores cool. Then the problems were compounded by the lack of adequate electricity, and so on.
This was more human error (not to mention the way it was all designed in the first place) than natural disaster.
like most of us, I tried to avoid the ludicrous Toady Show yesterday.
It being 8.58a.m I managed to get Wee Jim Nightie blowing hard down the phone to the Japanese Ambassador.
It was only at the end of the interview that I gather that our Jim said that it was HE that was in Japan…and our Japanese Boy was actually in London!
Good Lord-anyone else see the comedy here? That Nightie, Snow and the other fore skins of the Apocalpyse clearly managed to get nice rooms and good phone lines,; just so they could wave shrouds at us from the place where the best noddy shots were to be had…bring out your dead will you( Bet THAT is in their Japanese phrasebook!).
Are the polar bears safe again then?…why else would these useless articles be straddling the world blowing toxic gases at us down below? Who charters these planes of passion for these media grandees to get a freebie anytime something awful happens? Snow-Guerin,Naughtie…not a spade or diarrhoea kit between them!
Hope the Japanese can find them something useful to do instead of their grief thieving. Long way to go to avoid Comic Relief. That siad, hope that the Japanese find somewhere to store them-and would happily take a few students without visas in return.
Heck-send `em Lenny Henry and Marcus Brigstocke and I`d take ALL their tudents!
That deserves a LoL on top of a like.
Could it be that it is sinking in (not at the BBC, of course) that you can’t operate on double standards this long without them getting you in a tangle.
While the nukes are a relevant… sideshow… the key here is the relief operation along the length of the affected coastline.
These BBC airspace consumption units simply are in the way of what is desperately needed.
That said, can we persuade the Japanese to keep ’em once they are back on track?
I have decided that kit would not be welcome, and so am looking at the best charity proxy for munny. Red Cross looking favourite unless anyone knows better.
Sorry about that, Comic Relief.
Naughtie’s contribution today was pretty much to talk down the telephone to Roger Harrabin, Stephanie Flanders and Professor John Beddington, all (presumably) here in the UK, which he could have done from London. Then to talk to two BBC correspondents in Japan, which he could also have done from London. And to interview a Japanese government spokesman and someone from the opposition Liberal Democrats, both down the telephone, which he could have done from London. And to Mr Warren, the UK’s ambassador to Japan, and a vice president of Nissan, both down the telephone, which he could have done from London. Even the two academics he spoke to towards the end of the programme were clearly being interviewed over the phone.
Only in the last four minutes did he give us his own Jerry Springer-like reflections on his few days in Japan. Well-written though it was, was it really worth it? It didn’t give any fresh insights on the story that an insightful listeners would have found especially illuminating. To be blunt, it was linguistic smoke and mirrors to hide the fact that Naughtie’s reporting had hit on nothing revalatory. See if you agree by re-listening to it here.
Yeah, one could sense Naughtie calculating what his chances were of winning some sort of prize for his piece.
Shelagh Fogarty has been in Japan for 5Breakfast. One didn’t get any of that preening, portentous twaddle from her, just very human, very compassionate.
BBC-Greenie Roger Harrabin, or FOX NEWS Glenn Beck on Japan’s nuclear crisis?
Glenn Beck (10 min video)
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/blog/id.7157/blog_detail.asp
The eminent nuclear scientist Shukman was just on the news. No one knows anything about the nuclear plant he informs us, yet he spends 10 minutes with the same “what ifs” and “mays” used for “climate change”. Oh, and the people do not trust the company to tell them the truth so the US are sending some experts over.
Inuendo and speculation is not news.
I would get rid of all 24hr news channels, it just leads to this kind of tripe to avoid “dead air”. Two news bullitins a day is more than enough.
Not sure that I agree with this – I don’t believe that the Japanese have been very forthcoming with the truth about the situation anything like quickly enough. In emergencies like this, the people on the ground whilst extremely brave will also be extremely stressed leading to a very poor decision-making process. Outside input is essential and only possible with a free-flow of information. (The blurring of a 3rd AND 4th explosion earlier today shows this is not occurring).
During the Three Mile Island incident, it was only the arrival of the next shift in the control room that resolved the situation by backing out of the group-think cull-de-sac that up to then had made the situation worse and unresolvable.
Criticism by the the BBC of the information flow from Japan has in my opinion come far too late
It seems to me that much is to do with the Western media throwing their toys out of the pram that they are not being briefed how and when they like, with added agenda on top.
It’s a Japanese disaster of an epic scale, so if English speaking platitude dealers are in short supply to keep BBC or SKY in 24/7 meaningless sound bites it’s hardly a suprise.
And ‘don’t know’ is these days not acceptable to the preening microphone waving brigade. This seems to be changing hourly, and I doubt an engineer on the spot feels 15 mins of every hour briefing a press spokesperson to give a possibly bad translation to a ‘can’t you speak English?’ ‘reporter’ is the best use of their time. And in the void of a sincere ‘don’t know’, they seem to feel it’s fine to make things up to suit, by getting other folk in who don’t know either, but are happy enough to guess with a ‘could’ disclaimer.
It seems to be going downhill, but maybe a lot slower than it might have. I’d say leave the poor sods to it; the last thing they need is nagging armchair opinion. Though I agree ‘many hands make light work’ and exhausted folk make mistakes, there is ‘too many cooks’. Especially when none of this seems designed to help solve the problem now, but is simply niggling whinging, blame-culture stuff that should be left for later.
Just saw SKY and they’re on about lessons learned with Germany shutting stuff down and moving back-up generators out of basements to avoid the chances of a flood taking ’em out.
This seems knee-jerk pandering to the press pack (who still seem to be totally unconcerned about the rest of the country struggling with a 9.0 earthquake/tsunami).
I await with dread interest what happens if a terrorist decides that stuff above ground on poles seems a good target for a plane ramming.
From the sound of it, the combination factors have not been well enough assessed, and with retrofits and future designs, double whammy scenarios (from above and below) need to be allowed for in contingency.
But petty sniping at this stage… the only people that is helping are the glory hounds from the media packs trying to make a name by behaving like 5 year olds and using stressed or poor responses to spin up into juicy conspiracy theories.
Maybe one should be looking more at how the Japanese people, media and government are interacting, and the received opinion seems to be ‘keep calm and carry on’. At least for now, until the immediate problem is solved.
What some 2-year resident expat told Jim Naughtie in the hotel bar will do little to assist sensible evacuation plans, or help dig a kid out of rubble elsewhere.
There’s scene at the end of Die Hard where the hero’s wife decks the weasel reporter who uses ‘public right to know’ as an excuse for personal grandstanding that puts everyone in more danger. The cinema erupted at that point.
I am not sure our 4th estate quite realises the regard in which it is held by its self-serving antics in the name of ratings or agenda.
I don’t trust government. But I can vote them out if they get nailed. It seems that I don’t have that option with some media. And hence, by unaccountable consequent word and deed, I trust them even less.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidhughes/100079891/germanys-panicky-reaction-to-the-japanese-earthquake-is-dangerously-irresponsible/
‘Want to know what a headless chicken looks like? This snap has just dropped on the BBC’
Comment of note:
‘If you think the BBC is reporting differently, then let me tell you that they ask every Japanese they can get to speak to them if they are frightened about the ‘radiation’.
Of course they say they are – they’re polite and tell the foreigner what they want to hear …
Questions about their devastated lives?
Nope.’
Katabasis posted earlier (Yesterday, 12:50:58) about the BBC citing nuclear fears as the exclusive reason for the dive in the Nikkei index.
The nuclear situation has now become more grave. How does the BBC explain this?
NB: I’m on Spanish time, mis paisanos in the UK will have Katabasis’ post as 11:50:58, if I’m not mistaken.
HP
“How does the BBC explain this?”
Easy – as posted here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12755374 the headline reads “Japanese stocks rebounded on Wednesday as concerns over the long-term economic impact of Friday’s earthquake and tsunami eased.”
You see: it’s the nuclear threat which causes stock-market mayhem and it’s lessening fears concerning the earthquake and tsunami which causes recovery. In the BBC world of finance, if the UK had an earthquake and tsunami destroying the Outer Hebrides the FTSE rise would be unstoppable.
I am starting to believe our uniquely-funded £4B media monolith does indeed actually get its news solely from twitter.
Was having a pm-surf for a while just now, and on the #Fukushima ‘story’, I began to notice the vast majority of immediate, just-in, half-arsed, gossip-driven, skewed shares were overwhelming from a segment of the media infirmament I do follow, but have reason to crank an eyebrow at, even when viewing with my own eyes.
Only more sober tweets, an hour or so later, seemed more considered and valuable. These were from sources I imagine would not be allowed past the BBC firewall, much less forming part of a coffee-making research munchkin’s ‘briefing notes’ before they get ’em signed off by the IPCC in person after a 6-hr flight.
Being first, and most shrill, and hive-empathetic, should not be the ambition of professional, objective reporters. But these seem the fetid ponds they inhabit to fish in, and seem quite happy to remain around.