Media Research Center
By Julia A. Seymour
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
The massive earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan on March 11 claimed many lives and knocked the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant offline reviving decades-old fears as well as liberal media bias about nuclear power.
The news media have promoted anti-nuclear positions since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, although that incident did not injure or kill anyone and no long-term health impacts have been proven. At that time though, the frightening network coverage was "eerily similar" to the fictional Hollywood account of a nuclear disaster in a film released just days earlier: "The China Syndrome."
Three Mile Island was no "China Syndrome," yet some press outlets specifically sent reporters who had seen the film to cover the Harrisburg, Pa. nuclear accident, according to a PBS documentary.
Following the Japanese disaster, ABC's "Nightline" declared that "the new images from Japan have given the [California] doomsday earthquake scenario new urgency, with an added twist, the threat that a quake might be followed by a nuclear meltdown."
Like "Nightline" some recent reports have spread fear and worry concerning nuclear energy. CNN polled viewers on the question: "Should nuclear energy be a source of electricity?" Martin Bashir on MSNBC and others on ABC included left-wing anti-nuclear "experts" without noting their liberal perspective.
The U.S. gets roughly 20 percent of its power from 104 reactors providing nuclear energy, while many European countries like France rely on it much more. Despite the heavy reliance on nuclear power serious accidents are very rare.
Many of the recent news stories about Fukushima have mentioned Three Mile Island, the largest U.S. nuclear accident, especially after Japan's nuclear agency raised the accident level to 5 - the same level as the 1979 Pennsylvania accident but two levels lower than the Soviet's 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Because of that it is important to remember the facts about what happened at Three Mile Island, rather than just the long-lasting media hype about the disaster and media bias against nuclear power. Despite very frightening news reports at the time of the accident and in years after, no one was hurt or killed and very little radiation was leaked.
Read the entire article
The news media have promoted anti-nuclear positions since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, although that incident did not injure or kill anyone and no long-term health impacts have been proven. At that time though, the frightening network coverage was "eerily similar" to the fictional Hollywood account of a nuclear disaster in a film released just days earlier: "The China Syndrome."
Three Mile Island was no "China Syndrome," yet some press outlets specifically sent reporters who had seen the film to cover the Harrisburg, Pa. nuclear accident, according to a PBS documentary.
Following the Japanese disaster, ABC's "Nightline" declared that "the new images from Japan have given the [California] doomsday earthquake scenario new urgency, with an added twist, the threat that a quake might be followed by a nuclear meltdown."
Like "Nightline" some recent reports have spread fear and worry concerning nuclear energy. CNN polled viewers on the question: "Should nuclear energy be a source of electricity?" Martin Bashir on MSNBC and others on ABC included left-wing anti-nuclear "experts" without noting their liberal perspective.
The U.S. gets roughly 20 percent of its power from 104 reactors providing nuclear energy, while many European countries like France rely on it much more. Despite the heavy reliance on nuclear power serious accidents are very rare.
Many of the recent news stories about Fukushima have mentioned Three Mile Island, the largest U.S. nuclear accident, especially after Japan's nuclear agency raised the accident level to 5 - the same level as the 1979 Pennsylvania accident but two levels lower than the Soviet's 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Because of that it is important to remember the facts about what happened at Three Mile Island, rather than just the long-lasting media hype about the disaster and media bias against nuclear power. Despite very frightening news reports at the time of the accident and in years after, no one was hurt or killed and very little radiation was leaked.
Read the entire article
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