2011/04/09
The Foreign Ministry on Thursday blasted the foreign media for "excessive" reportage on the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, asking them to be more objective in their coverage.
The ministry requested that media outlets revise any incorrectly disseminated or exaggerated information in their reports.
However, stemming the flow of misinformation could prove impossible. Even if newspapers or television stations alter their coverage, irresponsible and factually incorrect stories can emerge from another source and swiftly spread over the Internet.
"Some in the foreign media have been reporting events at the Fukushima plant in a sensationalist manner," Chiaki Takahashi, state secretary for foreign affairs, said Thursday.
Takahashi said the ministry was asking in a "sincere maner" that the media treat the issue carefully.
An example of such sensationalism was a cartoon depicting three mushrooms clouds, representing Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukushima, that was published in the Toledo Blade, a newspaper in the U.S. state of Ohio, on March 15.
The Consulate-General of Japan in Detroit lodged a complaint against the paper, saying it was inappropriate to treat the Fukushima accident and the atomic bombings in the same manner.
The paper subsequently apologized and deleted the cartoon from its website.
Also on March 15, the British tabloid Daily Mail published an article saying that five workers had been killed at the site.
Yet Tokyo Electric Power Co. never made such an announcement. The company only confirmed the discovery of the bodies of two workers who were missing at the plant.
The Daily Mail did not mention the cause of death. The ministry took the article as an "apparent misunderstanding," but the story later appeared in newspapers and in television reports around the world.
On March 28, the Foreign Ministry told all of its overseas diplomatic missions: "There are widespread reports of five people being killed at the Fukushima plant. We urge you to seek a correction if you notice similar reports being disseminated."
The ministry requested that media outlets revise any incorrectly disseminated or exaggerated information in their reports.
However, stemming the flow of misinformation could prove impossible. Even if newspapers or television stations alter their coverage, irresponsible and factually incorrect stories can emerge from another source and swiftly spread over the Internet.
"Some in the foreign media have been reporting events at the Fukushima plant in a sensationalist manner," Chiaki Takahashi, state secretary for foreign affairs, said Thursday.
Takahashi said the ministry was asking in a "sincere maner" that the media treat the issue carefully.
An example of such sensationalism was a cartoon depicting three mushrooms clouds, representing Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukushima, that was published in the Toledo Blade, a newspaper in the U.S. state of Ohio, on March 15.
The Consulate-General of Japan in Detroit lodged a complaint against the paper, saying it was inappropriate to treat the Fukushima accident and the atomic bombings in the same manner.
The paper subsequently apologized and deleted the cartoon from its website.
Also on March 15, the British tabloid Daily Mail published an article saying that five workers had been killed at the site.
Yet Tokyo Electric Power Co. never made such an announcement. The company only confirmed the discovery of the bodies of two workers who were missing at the plant.
The Daily Mail did not mention the cause of death. The ministry took the article as an "apparent misunderstanding," but the story later appeared in newspapers and in television reports around the world.
On March 28, the Foreign Ministry told all of its overseas diplomatic missions: "There are widespread reports of five people being killed at the Fukushima plant. We urge you to seek a correction if you notice similar reports being disseminated."
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