I would like to post a correction to a statement I made yesterday.....

[Junkdrawer]

Yesterday, early in the Fukushima Daiichi incident, I posted this:

Here's the truth: We won't know the truth for years, if ever. Unless things turn REALLY bad. But we will be assured repeatedly that there's no problem.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=612992&mesg_id=614640

Well, it seems that even after things turn REALLY bad, we are being assured repeatedly that there's no problem:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4767249&mesg_id=4767249

Never underestimate the effectiveness of the Big Lie.

[rucky]

1. ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x622783

[Dennis Donovan]

2. Concern is frowned upon now...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x622572

:shrug:

[Hannah Bell]

3. if the government is lying about radiation levels, that can be verified indpendently,

even by private citizens with the right equipment.

[Junkdrawer]

5. No one, not even BBC reporters, is allowed within miles of the plant....

And the wind is blowing out to sea. Could be days before independent measurements are made, if ever.

[Hannah Bell]

7. nuclear radiation doesn't stay in one place & neither does the wind. people are allowed within

a twenty km radius of the plant. higher levels will show fairly shortly & continuing high levels, if they exist, will continue to register.

if the reactor has been breached & meltdown is in progress, levels will continue rising.

[sharesunited]

10. And the color change from death of flora should be visible from space.

[Skip_In_Boulder]

4. I have been watching this thing all night

and it is the strangest thing I have ever seen.

There has been story after story come out that no everything is O.K., nothing to worry about here which is then immediately followed by, Oh my God it's Armageddon.

I have no idea what is going on here and neither does anyone else as far as I can tell.

[Hannah Bell]

6. no, there have been a lot of people speculating & misreporting.

for example, no report i saw said "everything is ok".

a nuclear emergency was declared yesterday, fairly quickly after the earthquake hit. no one has said "everything is ok" since then.

[drm604]

8. This total confusion

with the story continuously changing back and forth is characteristic of a harried real-time effort to control information.

I find this kind of confusion in the media to be very discomforting. It would seem to indicate one of two things.

1. They know what is happening and are trying to hide it. If they're trying to hide it, it must be pretty bad.
   
2. They have no idea what is going on and are as confused as the rest of us.

Neither of those possibilities is comforting.

[Junkdrawer]

9. Indeed. It smacks of desperation. When officials in charge are facing....

the worst case, they lie. Look at Chernobyl.

[Hannah Bell]

11. i find that much of the apparent confusion is from people misstating

what's actually been reported, expanding on it, speculating about it.

[TheMadMonk]

12. 3) The media are trying to shape the story in order to get as many eyes glued to TVs...

...and the parading of their advertiser's products as possible.

Also if things go pear shaped they were there with the stories (and warning) first. If Nothing happens, it was confusion and garbled reports from the "zone". (And our Nielsen numbers were ...)

Look at who is reporting and how they are doing it. Al Jazhera is reporting the full press advisories as they are released. The tabloid media is picking out the most sensationalist words from the advisories and stringing them together in a way that gives the impression of the situation being a razor's edge from another Chernobyl. Even if they go on to quote the advisories verbatim, too many people have stopped paying attention.

Here let me try. Explosive device. Hazardous waste management facility. School. Contamination. Evacuation. Terrible disaster? Or a cherry bomb in the plumbing?

Yes the information is going to be sketchy. And it will probably remain so for a while. They aren't going to send people into an unstable "hot" zone just to satisfy our ghoulish curiosity. Almost all of what is going on is being remotely managed from the control room and anything that is hands on, will be done with dispatch and no rubbernecking.