Fear Itself

I've always been a little suspicious of the established media, that Alphabet Soup of news peddlers like ABC, CBS, and NBC, even more so since Dan Rather got duped into reporting on forged documents back in 2004. We don't have to go there, I'm sure if you're older than eleven, you remember. I'm sure we have all come to expect that people who want to sell newspapers and advertising space will toss out a sensationalized story with an eye-grabber of a headline, and if it helps them push their agenda, even better. So, imagine the payday you can expect if you publish a headline like, MELTDOWN! ANOTHER CHERNOBYL!
Unfortunately, there is a very real crisis going on in Japan right now; there is great suffering there due to the earthquake that happened on March 11th, and there is a nuclear power plant involved...but the pictures you see under the headlines are not of that power plant, they are of a natural gas plant and an oil refinery. Those two accidents are bad enough, I admit, but putting the words "nuclear" or "meltdown" next to or above them is just plain deceptive. And is this really going to be as bad as the Chernoyl accident? Well...no, probably not. Actually, it won't even be as bad as our own accident at Three-Mile Island, most likely. It's not good, obviously, but the Japanese say it's manageable. Why do I believe them? Well, for one thing, you have to get both sides of the story. For another...well, there's a good article on that here, actually.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/fear-the-media-meltdown-not-the-nuclear-one/
I heard on the radio that people in Hawaii, California, and Oregon were so scared out of their wits by this that they are buying up radiation pills and decontamination kits like there's no tomorrow. No really, like tomorrow actually won't come because of all of the radiation. Of course, if you went online yesterday and saw the headline news at msn or yahoo, You probably thought the sky was falling, too. In fact, there's an article on msnbc right now that says, "top nuclear energy chief suggesting that one crippled reactor was in danger of a complete meltdown," and the nightly business report just referred to the situation as a "nuclear crisis." That sounds pretty bad, right? Any time you put the words "reactor" and "meltdown in a sentence together and you are not writing a sci-fi script, it's going to make people panic just a little bit. To be honest, I can't tell you that Japan won't just slip into the sea two days from now...but I'm thinking it isn't likely, so I'm not reporting that here. Just doesn't seem ethical, somehow. So, please, don't go running off to the supermarket looking for radiation pills, folks. Just remember that many of the so-called experts the news channels are interviewing are really activists who have been pushing us all to get rid of nuclear power since the 1970s. They are just using your fear to push their agenda and/or sell newspapers. As the man once said, the only thing we have to fear...By the way, let me just point out, here, that I am not Homer Simpson. I do not work at a nuclear power plant, and I do not have a dog in this fight. All well-built reactors have have the capacity for a "meltdown," but that doesn't mean we all have to.