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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJapan's timid coverage of Fukushima led this news anchor to revolt — and he's not alone (PRI)
Reporter: Sam Harnett
PRI, October 17, 2014
EXCERPT...
Japanese journalists did what Tajima calls "announcement journalism" in reporting on the crisis. He says they were reporting the press releases of big companies and the people in power. And he's not the only one who thinks so.
I am a newscaster, but I couldn't tell the true story on my news program," says Jun Hori, a former anchor for NHK, the Japanese state broadcaster.
Hori says the network restricted what he and other journalists could say about Fukushima and moved more slowly than foreign media to report on the disaster and how far radiation was spreading. The attitude in the newsroom was not to question official information
I was on the ground in Fukushima, and a lot of people kept asking me, why didn't you tell us earlier about what is happening? Hori says.
Out of frustration, Hori started tweeting uncensored coverage. I got a huge response, he says, but then my superiors said the NHK was getting complaints from politicians about what I was saying. They told me I had to stop.
CONTINUED w/audio, video...
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-10-16/frustrated-japans-coverage-fukushima-crisis-japanese-news-anchor-started
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Before Pruneface Ronnie made his first deal with the Ayatollah, a great professor understood how money and power work, intertwined, to muzzle dissent:
Friendly Fascism - The New Face of Power in America
by Bertram Gross
EXCERPT...
Friendly fascism portrays two conflicting trends in the United States and other countries of the so-called "free world."
[font color="red"]The first is a slow and powerful drift toward greater concentration of power and wealth in a repressive Big Business-Big Government partnership.[/font color] This drift leads down the road toward a new and subtly manipulative form of corporatist serfdom. The phrase "friendly fascism" helps distinguish this possible future from the patently vicious corporatism of classic fascism in the past of Germany, Italy and Japan. It also contrasts with the friendly present of the dependent fascisms propped up by the U.S. government in El Salvador, Haiti, Argentina, Chile, South Korea, the Philippines and elsewhere.
The other is a slower and less powerful tendency for individuals and groups to seek greater participation in decisions affecting themselves and others. This trend goes beyond mere reaction to authoritarianism. It transcends the activities of progressive groups or movements and their use of formal democratic machinery. It is nourished by establishment promises-too often rendered false-of more human rights, civil rights and civil liberties. It is embodied in larger values of community, sharing, cooperation, service to others and basic morality as contrasted with crass materialism and dog-eat-dog competition. It affects power relations in the household, workplace, community, school, church, synagogue, and even the labyrinths of private and public bureaucracies. It could lead toward a truer democracy-and for this reason is bitterly fought...
These contradictory trends are woven fine into the fabric of highly industrialized capitalism. The unfolding logic of friendly fascist corporatism is rooted in "capitalist society's transnational growth and the groping responses to mounting crises in a dwindling capitalist world". [font color="red"]Mind management and sophisticated repression become more attractive to would-be oligarchs when too many people try to convert democratic promises into reality.[/font color] On the other hand, the alternative logic of true democracy is rooted in "humankind's long history of resistance to unjustified privilege" and in spontaneous or organized "reaction (other than fright or apathy) to concentrated power...and inequality, injustice or coercion".
A few years ago too many people closed their eyes to the indicators of the first tendency.
But events soon began to change perceptions.
CONTINUED...
link:http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Friendly_Fascism_BGross.html
In Japan, TEPCO bows to no one, except the emperor, maybe.
procon
(15,805 posts)is an apt description. In the US we saw the rise of "announcement journalism" in throughout the Bush years when stenographers masquerading as reporters and passing along press releases without question or concern. Now we have "conflict journalism" where two opposing views of any issue must be equally present. Of course, this has given rise to real head scratchers like evolution vs creationism, or global warming vs Clean Coal, and equal time for Birthers.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Here's why the pendulum has never swung back.
The Powell Memo (also known as the Powell Manifesto)
The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971
Introduction
In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powells nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powells legal objectivity. [font color="red"]Anderson cautioned that Powell might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice in behalf of business interests.[/font color]
Though Powells memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administrations hands-off business philosophy.
Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building a focus we share, though often with sharply contrasting goals.* (See our endnote for more on this.)
So did Powells political views influence his judicial decisions? The evidence is mixed. [font color="red"]Powell did embrace expansion of corporate privilege and wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision that effectively invented a First Amendment right for corporations to influence ballot questions.[/font color] On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.
CONTINUED...
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/
This story continues through today, where we have Chief Justice William Rehnquist appoint the likes of the little turd from Crawford to the presidency and his successor in Sgt Pepper striping John Roberts shepherding corporate friendly law through the courts and appointing nothing but BFEE-friendly repukes to the FISA Court.
pa28
(6,145 posts)Even in the US as Fukushima's cores melted down we were told it wasn't happening.
As the reactor buildings exploded one after the other on live TV we were told only conspiracy theorists and the scientifically ignorant would believe in the possibility of an uncontained meltdown.
Incredibly, the public at large seemed to go along with the press release journalism we saw on both sides of the Pacific rather than believe their own eyes.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)Called "...conspiracy theorists and the scientifically ignorant... "
Still get that same crap.
We have been proven to have had a firm grasp on what was happening.
Such is life. Doesn't really matter in the long run, except that folks sure can see that the people throwing the slander are just fools. If one of them shows up here on this thread you will see what I'm saying. Hopefully they don't open up here and prove me right.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)Last edited Sun Oct 19, 2014, 12:53 PM - Edit history (2)
Guess you got lucky.
pa28
(6,145 posts)That's impressive!
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)I need a new fan club. Heh.
What is important to realize is that the nuke scientists who told us nukes were safe, and that 'it' couldn't happen, were obviously more ignorant than those of us who are anti Nuclear Dem party members. The question is: Are they willfully ignorant, or just stupid?
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)This nice Lady Barbara Judge, a former SEC lawyer and now UK regulator and aristocrat extraordinaire, wants to keep the world safe for nuclear power.
[font color="green"][font size="4"]The mood at Fukushima Daiichi is "fantastic."[/font size][/font color]
Lady Barbara Judge: Japan's smart nuclear weapon
The head of the UK's Pension Protection Fund has been drafted in to help assure the residents of Fukushima that its reactors are safe
MARGARETA PAGANO
The Independent (UK) SUNDAY 17 FEBRUARY 2013
Lady Barbara Judge is just back from inspecting the nuclear plants at Fukushima in Japan, the ones closed down after the devastating earthquake and tsunami two years ago. She visited the control rooms at Daiichi plant one where three of the reactors went into meltdown and met many of the men who risked their lives by working during the emergency to cool the over-heated reactors and eventually shut them down.
It's not what she expected but the mood there was " fantastic". "What was astonishing was the optimism and hope shown by the workers that these plants can be made safe, and that they can start operating again," she says. But this was in stark contrast to the mood of the Japanese public, still in a state of shock and strongly opposed to the restoration of the nuclear programme.
Already being hailed as Japan's nuclear saviour, Lady Judge was in Fukushima with the bosses of the plants' owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which was criticised for its bungled reaction to the catastrophe. It's her first trip since being appointed deputy chairman of Tepco's new Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee, set up after the disaster to propose a new self-regulatory structure for the industry. If all goes well, Tepco hopes to persuade the new government said to be more favourable than the last to restart two of the plants later this year.
SNIP...
It's her long experience of Britain's nuclear industry that attracted the Japanese, who rarely bring in outsiders, let alone a woman. Lady Judge's credentials go back to 2002 when she became a director of the UK's Atomic Energy Authority, and was then chairman for six years until 2010. She is still closely involved with the industry so, a few days after returning from Fukushima, was able to take Tepco executives to the West Midlands' Oldbury site to show how it has been decommissioned using the strictest safety protocols.
SNIP...
Yet there's one group of people who stay stubbornly anti-nuclear women, especially the more educated ones. Wherever you are in the world, she says, all the focus groups show that it's better-off women who don't trust fission.
CONTINUED...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/lady-barbara-judge-japans-smart-nuclear-weapon-8497747.html
It seems that government service in the United States can open doors to [s]money[/s] opportunity in the United Kingdom. From the comment section at e-news we learn:
weeman
February 17, 2013 at 10:29 am
Tokyo Rose I have named her, just like the second world war the propaganda machine is on full spin cycle and we all know the false lies that they promote and brainwashing of populace.
...
Time Is Short
February 18, 2013 at 2:09 pm
Here's a big reason she was brought in:
'Radioactive Asia: There Will Be 100 Additional Nuclear Reactors in Asia in 20 Years'
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2013/02/radioactive-asia-there-will-be-100.html
If she's working for those that control the majority of the uranium mining/processing, you can see the money involved.
Can't let the murder of 8 billion people get in the way of third-quarter profits, can we?
...
Sickputer
February 16, 2013 at 9:20 pm
Her track record has not always been so cheery:
April 23, 2010
"WASHINGTONMassey Energy Co., owner of a coal mine where 29 workers were killed this month, on Monday said that the board member responsible for governance had resigned because of the demands of "other ongoing business activities."
Lady Barbara Thomas Judge's resignation, effective immediately, comes amid growing criticism of the management of the Richmond, Virginia, company. For months, shareholders had complained that Lady Judge was unable to devote enough time to the job because she served on too many corporate boards. The complaints about Massey's corporate governance intensified after a coal-mine explosion two weeks ago that was the deadliest in 40 years."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703757504575195070711065984.html
Another article in 2007:
"But questions remain. Why does Lady Judge need so many jobs? How did she land her role at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, when she had no relevant experience? Is it relevant that a female friend was on the selection panel?
Lady Judge bristles. She points out that, as a lawyer, it is her job to master a subject about which she is initially ignorant. To prepare for her role at the Atomic Energy Authority, she even studied her son's physics books. She also has a strategic business role, which she is well equipped to carry out.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-452635/Is-best-connected-woman-Britain
The monied class have zero compunction about irradiating the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere or any which way they slice up their planet and protect their loot with the nukes We the People have so kindly paid for.
It's getting apparent that us renters are SOL.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Let us celebrate the proles who keep screaming that 2+2=4.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Each human being represents an infinity. It's why corporations can never be people, my Friend.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)happened in the nuclear industry around the world. Their bottom line is protect the industry.
In the 50s we always had the radio on and at least once a month there would be a leak somewhere in the US. The story always ended with the words "non-threatening levels of exposure" (or something like that - I do not remember the exact quote). My dad would say "I wonder how many non-threatening leaks it takes to make it threatening?"
It sounds to me like the people of Japan are being treated like guinea pigs. In fact since they are poisoning the ocean maybe it is all of us who are the guinea pigs.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)War crime, Yakuza, Secret Government. Why not?
Japans Nuclear Industry: The CIA Link.
By Eleanor Warnock
June 1, 2012, 10:18 AM JST.
Wall Street Journal Blog
Tetsuo Arima, a researcher at Waseda University in Tokyo, told JRT he discovered in the U.S. National Archives a trove of declassified CIA files that showed how one man, Matsutaro Shoriki, was instrumental in jumpstarting Japans nascent nuclear industry.
Mr. Shoriki was many things: a Class A war criminal, the head of the Yomiuri Shimbun (Japans biggest-selling and most influential newspaper) and the founder of both the countrys first commercial broadcaster and the Tokyo Giants baseball team. Less well known, according to Mr. Arima, was that the media mogul worked with the CIA to promote nuclear power.
SNIP...
Mr. Shoriki, backed by the CIA, used his influence to publish articles in the Yomiuri that extolled the virtues of nuclear power, according to the documents found by Mr. Arima. Keen on remilitarizing Japan, Mr. Shoriki endorsed nuclear power in hopes its development would one day arm the country with the ability to make its own nuclear weapons, according to Mr. Arima. Mr. Shorikis behind-the-scenes push created a chain reaction in other media that eventually changed public opinion.
SNIP
Mr. Shoriki, backed by the CIA, used his influence to publish articles in the Yomiuri that extolled the virtues of nuclear power, according to the documents found by Mr. Arima. Keen on remilitarizing Japan, Mr. Shoriki endorsed nuclear power in hopes its development would one day arm the country with the ability to make its own nuclear weapons, according to Mr. Arima. Mr. Shorikis behind-the-scenes push created a chain reaction in other media that eventually changed public opinion.
CONTINUED...
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/06/01/japans-nuclear-industry-the-cia-link/
After President Carter was out of office, it was pretty much full-steam ahead for the Japanese bomb during the Pruneface Ronnie-Poppy Bush years. Hence, Fukushima Daiichi Number 3 and other select Japanese reactors were set up to process plutonium uranium fuels.
United States Circumvented Laws To Help Japan Accumulate Tons of Plutonium
By Joseph Trento
on April 9th, 2012
National Security News Service
The United States deliberately allowed Japan access to the United States most secret nuclear weapons facilities while it transferred tens of billions of dollars worth of American tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plutonium since the 1980s, a National Security News Service investigation reveals. These activities repeatedly violated U.S. laws regarding controls of sensitive nuclear materials that could be diverted to weapons programs in Japan. The NSNS investigation found that the United States has known about a secret nuclear weapons program in Japan since the 1960s, according to CIA reports.
The diversion of U.S. classified technology began during the Reagan administration after it allowed a $10 billion reactor sale to China. Japan protested that sensitive technology was being sold to a potential nuclear adversary. The Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations permitted sensitive technology and nuclear materials to be transferred to Japan despite laws and treaties preventing such transfers. Highly sensitive technology on plutonium separation from the U.S. Department of Energys Savannah River Site and Hanford nuclear weapons complex, as well as tens of billions of dollars worth of breeder reactor research was turned over to Japan with almost no safeguards against proliferation. Japanese scientist and technicians were given access to both Hanford and Savannah River as part of the transfer process.
SNIP...
A year ago a natural disaster combined with a man-made tragedy decimated Northern Japan and came close to making Tokyo, a city of 30 million people, uninhabitable. Nuclear tragedies plague Japans modern history. It is the only nation in the world attacked with nuclear weapons. In March 2011, after a tsunami swept on shore, hydrogen explosions and the subsequent meltdowns of three reactors at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant spewed radiation across the region. Like the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan will face the aftermath for generations. A twelve-mile area around the site is considered uninhabitable. It is a national sacrifice zone.
How Japan ended up in this nuclear nightmare is a subject the National Security News Service has been investigating since 1991. We learned that Japan had a dual use nuclear program. The public program was to develop and provide unlimited energy for the country. But there was also a secret component, an undeclared nuclear weapons program that would allow Japan to amass enough nuclear material and technology to become a major nuclear power on short notice.
CONTINUED...
http://www.dcbureau.org/201204097128/national-security-news-service/united-states-circumvented-laws-to-help-japan-accumulate-tons-of-plutonium.html
Those of who have seen The World at War series on the tee vee are familiar with the black and white footage and great narrative chronicling the main events and figures of World War II. One of those episodes was entitled "The Bomb" and featured an interview with John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War to President Roosevelt and President Truman.
Here's part of what Mr. McCloy said about the Atomic Bomb the use of which he counseled only as a last resort, after warning Japan to surrender (around 7:30 mark of Part 2):
Besides that, weve got a new force, a new type of energy that will revolutionize warfare, destructive beyond any contemplation. Id said, Id mention the bomb. Mentioning the bomb, even at that late date, in that select group, was like, it was like they were all shocked. Because it was such a closely guarded secret. It was comparable to mentioning Skull and Bones at Yale which youre not supposed to do.
After the war, McCloy was the United States High Commissioner to Germany, administering the U.S. zone of occupation, making him one of the front-line leaders of the Cold War. In that capacity, one of the questionable things he did was to forgive several NAZI industrialists and war criminals.
The great cartoonist Herb Block, HERBLOCK, depicted McCloy holding open a prison door for a NAZI, while in the background Stalin took a photo (if anyone has a copy or link to the cartoon, Id be much obliged). About 15 years later, Mr. McCloy served the nation as a member of the Warren Commission.
While he wasnt a member of Skull and Bones, McCloy certainly worked closely with a bunch of them, including Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush. As a Wall Street and Washington insider, "Mr. Establishment" he was called, Mr. McCloy used the offices of government to centralize power and wealth. That is most un-democratic.
Mother Jones goes into detail:
The Nuclear Weapons Industry's Money Bombs
How millions in campaign cash and revolving-door lobbying have kept America's atomic arsenal off the chopping block.
By R. Jeffrey Smith, Center for Public Integrity
Mother Jones
Wed Jun. 6, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
Employees of private companies that produce the main pieces of the US nuclear arsenal have invested more than $18 million in the election campaigns of lawmakers that oversee related federal spending, and the companies also employ more than 95 former members of Congress or Capitol Hill staff to lobby for government funding, according to a new report.
The Center for International Policy, a nonprofit group that supports the "demilitarization" of US foreign policy, released the report on Wednesday to highlight what it described as the heavy influence of campaign donations and pork-barrel politics on a part of the defense budget not usually associated with large profits or contractor power: nuclear arms.
As Congress deliberated this spring on nuclear weapons-related projects, including funding for the development of more modern submarines and bombers, the top 14 contractors gave nearly $3 million to the 2012 reelection campaigns of lawmakers whose support they needed for these and other projects, the report disclosed.
Half of that sum went to members of the four key committees or subcommittees that must approve all spending for nuclear armsthe House and Senate Armed Services Committees and the Energy and Water or Defense appropriations subcommittees, according to data the Center compiled from the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. The rest went to lawmakers who are active on nuclear weapons issues because they have related factories or laboratories in their states or districts.
Members of the House Armed Services Committee this year have sought to erect legislative roadblocks to further reductions in nuclear arms, and also demanded more spending for related facilities than the Obama administration sought, including $100 million in unrequested funds for a new plant that will make plutonium cores for nuclear warheads, and $374 million for a new ballistic missile-firing submarine. The House has approved those requests, but the Senate has not held a similar vote on the 2013 defense bill.
CONTINUED...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/nuclear-bombs-congress-elections-campaign-donations
It isn't ironic or coincidental. It is the Establishment, the in-group, the Elite, the One-Percent thats pretty much gotten the lions share of the wealth created over the last 50 years. The same group thats pretty much had their fingers on the atomic button ever since the Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as profited from the development of nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and the almost continuous state of war since then. For lack of a better term, I call them the BFEE, or War Party.
hunter
(38,325 posts)It's meant to confuse. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Confused, misinformed, and frightened people are easy to manipulate.
I read my news like I read a scientific paper, with a very critical eye.
Most scientific papers are crud, generally not meant to be deceptive or fraudulent, but often motivated by objectives like grants or tenure. Throw it out there and see what sticks.
Television news on the other hand is nearly all deceptive or fraudulent crud, and it's getting worse.
Personally, the fact that a tsunami can kill and maim so many people scares me more than the accident at Fukushima. It's a big expensive mess to clean up, but far worse things have happened. Non-radioactive industrial toxins often have a "half life" of essentially forever, and they are not easily detectable, it takes more than a Geiger-Counter to search for them.
You know what I think is really scary? Fracking.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)But the thing is, Fukushima ain't quit cooking, and it appears that the Pacific is what will need to be cleaned up. How do you clean the Pacific?
hunter
(38,325 posts)But I guess it's easier to focus on nuclear power than the global catastrophes of fossil fuels, human ignorance, and overpopulation.
In Japan it often seems to me that the focus on Fukushima is a psychological diversion from the traumas of the tsunami itself.
We'd all rather deal with the problems we can solve rather than the problems we seem powerless against.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)Quoting hunter: "...than the accident at Fukushima. It's a big expensive mess to clean up, but far worse things have happened."
That equates to me as you saying Fukushima is not really a problem to the degree that most knowledgeable people consider it to be.
And you totally ignored the question of how to clean up the Pacific.
The question is not one of cost, it is a matter of is it even possible to clean the Pacific.
I guess, like you say, you are one of those who would : "...rather deal with the problems we can solve rather than the problems we seem powerless against."
The foci for me is for prevention of another nuke plant blowing its guts into our environment. The only way to do that is to close them all down safely. And do it now. So we are in opposition. You play down nuclear accidents without any scientific support, while I use science to make the case we can not afford one more nuke calamity. We certainly never could afford Fukushima.
If, hunter, you have some science backing your position, you should post it up. Otherwise, it seems you are just being emotional with your support for nukes.
hunter
(38,325 posts)I live in potential fracking country and I'd rather not have very toxic and radioactive fracking wastes in my drinking water.
If I lived in coal country I'd rather not have very toxic and radioactive coal wastes in my air and my food and my drinking water.
My taxes pay for hot and cold wars in oil producing nations because the most terrifying thing imaginable to our leaders would be a decoupling of the dollar from the mighty engines of oil.
And all of us are beginning to feel the effects of greenhouse gases as the oceans rise and weather extremes become more common.
I've always stated my opinions very clearly here on DU. Our high energy industrial consumer society needs to be shut down. We can do it on our own terms or we can wait for nature to do it the old fashioned ways by disrupting our society and killing off large numbers of us.
In the history of this earth "growth" like we humans are experiencing always ends. We are not an exception to the rule.
I'm actually an absurdly optimistic sort because I believe we could devise an easy going, comfortable, low energy, high technology society.
But for now our economic definitions of "productivity" and "profit" are grossly ill-defined. The sort of "economic productivity" we currently worship is destroying both our natural environment and our humanity.
malaise
(269,157 posts)They'd be on the streets protesting.