One of the big issues that has emerged since the world shifted on its axis on March 11 is the different way that the Japanese and foreign media have covered the nuclear crisis.
Japan's newspapers and broadcasters have on the whole reported the crisis soberly, led by NHK's almost adjective-free reports.
That's a marked contrast to the sometimes hyperbolic, even hysterical reporting by some European and U.S. media organizations, some of which have hyped the radiation scare way out of proportion to the actual threat.
Unlike journalists parachuted in from abroad to briefly cover the disaster, most Tokyo-based foreign correspondents have tried to walk the line between these two extremes -- wary of sensationalism but also very critical of the sometimes obsequious, even restrained coverage by local journalists.
The broader point was made very clearly I think by one of my fellow correspondents, Leo Lewis, of The Times.
"Of course I am not defending exaggeration, but I would rather have a vigilant press whose worst failures are sensationalism than a passive, acquiescent press whose worst failure is complicity."
For Lewis and others, Japan's media was far too tame in its coverage of the nuclear issue before March 11. Who were the journalists questioning the logic of building 54 nuclear reactors in one of the world's most seismically unstable countries?
On the whole, the media here agreed with the government line that Japan's nuclear plants are safe. I remember a few years ago researching an article on the Hamaoka plant in Shizuoka Prefecture -- many seismologists predict another huge quake in the area -- and being astonished to find not a single newspaper article on this very important issue.
The people who are paying the price for this policy are those living within 30 kilometers of the stricken Fukushima reactors. On the last week in March, I decided to go and talk to them.
Obviously, this was a calculated risk: As I write, radiation from the plant has been detected in my home country of Ireland 9,500 kilometers away, so the contamination must be considerable. But I figured as long as I didn't stay near the plant for long, I'd be fine.
I was surprised to find some local people carrying Geiger counters. "The reading now is 56 millisieverts," said Onuki Masaru, who slowed and rolled down his window to warn me of the most dangerous area farther along the coast.
Among the places I visited was a city called Tamura, between 20-30 kilometers away from the crippled plant. There I found Matsumoto Hironobu and his son Makoto driving their pickup down the deserted main street.
"Almost everybody left after the earthquake," recalled Makoto. "We can't, because we have a sick old person inside our house who can't be moved. But there aren't many like us. It's difficult to know when they'll be back. I mean, who knows what will happen to the nuclear plant?" (By David McNeill, Contributing Writer)
(Mainichi Japan) April 24, 2011
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