I have not until now commented on the BBC’s coverage of Fukushima. The reason is that the safety of nuclear plants is a fearsomely complex subject, as I discovered many years ago when I covered for the BBC parts of the endless inquiry into the Windscale station. Even the experts were bamboozled by the evidence and obfuscation that went on.
But it’s becoming pretty clear now that, short of highly unusual new developments, what is happening at Fukushima falls far short of nuclear catastrophe. Far more important in human terms is the immense suffering that the Japanese are enduring in consequence of the tsunami itself. They have lost their homes during a bitterly cold winter and thousands are being forced to take shelter wherever they can, including in the compounds of nuclear power stations. And ironically, one of the biggest hardships they face is lack of power.
But nothing will stop the BBC in its greenie crusade. For the newsroom, Fukushima continues mostly to be an opportunity for full-scale anti-nuclear propaganda. Never mind the suffering, let’s focus on Armageddon. Yesterday, for example, Chris Hogg excitedly led a scarefest report with the news that radiation levels off the Japanese coast are at 1,250 times safety limits. Shock, horror, hold the front page, let’s evacuate everyone. Mr Hogg then goes on to amplify his alarmism by larding the piece with words like “unpredictable” and news of people being taken to hospital. The tone is undisguised hatred of nuclear power.
The place for such garbage should be the spike. Here, Anthony Watts explains why. First the radiation levels involved are well within safety limits, second, a nuclear plant that is 40 years hold has survived being battered at a level higher than it was ever predicted, and third the real story of Fukushima is the humanitarian distress.
To be fair, some at the BBC are not happy with this flagrant alarmism. The fragrant Fiona Fox of the alarmist Science Media Centre here warns on the BBC College of Journalism site that much of the reporting of Fukushima has been overblown. But as Ms Fox is a partner-in-crime for most of the green frenzy at the BBC, it’s definitely a pot/kettle/black lament.
BBC-Greenie lobby (inc Harrabin/Black) oppose energy derived from:
1.) coal: ‘too dirty’;
2.) nuclear: ‘too risky’;
3.) gas shale in Britain: ‘too little known’;
BUT BBC-Greenie lobby go for impractical, costly, inefficient wind farms as the way of ensuring that Britain’s lights don’t stay on.
Let’s just burn the greenies. Mind you, they’d have to be seasoned for a couple of years, first…
Look on the bright side, if it wasn’t for the nuclear crisis (no fatalities to date) the juveniles would have been bigging up a connection between the tsunami & AGW
Some did any way. Stafan Nilsson, president of the European Economic and Social Committee gave it his best shot.
Talking of documentaries, Radio Times gives us this quote from Niall Ferguson in his c4 documentary tonight
“racism wasn’t some backward-looking, reactionary ideology; it was the state of the art, and people then believed in it as readily as people today buy the theory of man-made climate change.”
but the BBC Radio times hits back “Ouch! The equating of climate science with eugenics comes in the middle of an OTHERWISE shrewd tour of colonial rights and wrongs”
The BBC no doubt use the Fukushima accident as a means to push their own greenie agenda, but I think it is also the case that they are acting like the shrill “Tabloids” by exaggerating the “news” to gain viewers. Either way this is against their charter.
Noticeable this lunchtime was an odd piece of phrasing, I paraphrase because I don’t write it down ‘Levels of radioacivity have risen to x% of safe levels, whilst the Japanes government say that airborne radiation is falling’ So bad news is reported as fact, good news is what a government said – subtle but pernicious.