UK press under government pressure
Conspiracy to commit journalism Jay Rosen’s Press Think, Aug.20
“If sunlight coalitions are to succeed, they won’t succeed by outwitting surveillance. Not better technology, but greater legitimacy is their edge.”
The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.” There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. “You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more.” —Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian
That’s the government telling the editor of a national newspaper: Time’s up, no more of that journalism stuff! We’ll decide when there’s been enough debate. Stop now or we’ll make you stop. Rusbridger’s response: We will continue our careful reporting of the Snowden material. “We just won’t do it from London.” (The Guardian has a U.S. operation based in New York.) FromReuters:
The Guardian’s decision to publicize the government threat – and the newspaper’s assertion that it can continue reporting on the Snowden revelations from outside of Britain – appears to be the latest step in an escalating battle between the news media and governments over reporting of secret surveillance programs.
This battle is global. Just as the surveillance state is an international actor — not one government, but many working together — and just as the surveillance net stretches worldwide because the communications network does too, the struggle to report on the secret system’s overreach is global, as well. It’s the collect-it-all coalition against an expanded Fourth Estate, worldwide……. http://pressthink.org/2013/08/conspiracy-to-commit-journalism/
Mainstream media’s deliberate lies and misinformation about renewable energy
Actually, Germany gets only about as much annual sun as Seattle or Alaska; its sunniest region gets less sun than almost anywhere in the lower 48 states. This underscores an important point: solar power works and competes not only in the sunniest places, but in some pretty cloudy places, too.
A pervasive pattern
The Fox Business example is not a singular incident. Some mainstream media around the world have a tendency to publish misinformed or, worse, systematically and falsely negative stories about renewable energy. Continue reading
Film” Pandora’s Promise” spews out a stream of untruths,
The movie also illustrates that none of its five layman “converts” to pro-nuke views knows enough about nuclear plants or other energy solutions to evaluate them fairly. They only know the Nuclear Dream.
A Nuclear Submariner Challenges a Pro-Nuclear Film NYT, By ANDREW C. REVKIN, 16 Aug 13 John Dudley Miller, a former nuclear engineering officer in the Navy with a doctorate in social psychology and a long career in journalism, sent this “Your Dot” critique of “Pandora’s Promise,” the new documentary defending nuclear power,
When I saw “Pandora’s Promise,” I didn’t believe a word of it. I served as a submarine nuclear engineering officer for my four-year stint in the Navy years ago. I qualified as an Engineering Officer of the Watch (a guy who’s in charge of the plant and its other technicians during four-hour shifts) on two different sub reactors. I know the truth about reactors, and the movie replaces it with the demonstrably false Nuclear Dream, a just-so mythical story claiming that nukes are safe, clean and cheap…..
the movie – It spews out a stream of untruths, for instance, telling us only that Chernobyl killed56 people. It leaves out that a United Nations World Health Organization agency predicts 16,000 more will die from Chernobyl cancers and that the European Environment Agency estimates 34,000 more. It omits that non-fatalthyroid cancer struck another 6,000, mostly children
Even the movie’s two reactor designers distort truth. Physicist Charles Till claims that fast-breeder reactors are inherently safe. Actually, they’re riskier than ordinary reactors. Hans Bethe, Manhattan Project scientist and Nobel laureate, calculated in 1956 that if a breeder’s liquid sodium coolant leaked out, it could melt in 40 seconds, become a small unintended atom bomb and spontaneously explode. (Modern designers believe breeders are more likely to melt down like Three Mile Island than to explode like Chernobyl.)
The breeder reactors EBR-1 in Idaho and Fermi-1 near Detroit partially melted. Several breeders have suffered sodium coolant fires, because sodium automatically burns in air and explodes in water. Continue reading
Corporate globalisation of science and media
“Nuclear Guinea Pigs”: Deadly Experiments and Contaminated Reality By Greg Guma Global Research, August 11, 2013 “……….Scientists and journalists like to believe that they are neutral witnesses who don’t affect the objects of their observation. But this is at best convenient self-deception, and at worst a callous lie……
Finally, there is the largest experiment of the moment, known as corporate globalization. Described by many experts as an indisputable fact of post-modern life, it is actually another deadly project, a sequel to the industrial revolution. And we know how well that one has gone for the planet. But like the victims in Nevada, the South Pacific, and the Amazon, we haven’t been told about the real costs or objectives. The truth, after all, might lead to resistance and accountability.
As many scientists now acknowledge, conceiving any experiment is the experience of an observer who is also a participant. Building on the theory of relativity, quantum physics has demonstrated that every measurement requires an act of intervention. As quantum physicist John Wheeler explained, “Participator is the incontrovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics. It strikes down the term ‘observer’ of classical theory, the man who stands safely behind the thick glass wall, and watches what goes on without taking part. It can’t be done, quantum mechanics says.”
And so, if there is really no way to observe any event or phenomenon without somehow affecting what happens, what are journalists or scientists to do? Well, at least act responsibly. This means acknowledging bias, intervening with compassion, and providing enough information to let the public make its own, fully informed choices. http://www.globalresearch.ca/nuclear-guinea-pigs-deadly-experiments-and-contaminated-reality/5345606
Feinstein: You’re Not a Real Journalist Unless You Draw a Salary
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
August 9, 2013
Press “control” and “+” or “-” to make Feinsteins head fit the centaurs body.. (should work in most browsers 🙂 )
California Senator Dianne Feinstein has proposed an amendment to the Media Shield Law – an irrelevant law ignoring protection already afforded by the First Amendment – that would limit the law’s protection only to “real reporters,” not bloggers and other upstart alternative media types.
A real reporter, declared Madame Feinstein during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, is “a salaried agent” of a media company like the New York Times or ABC News, not a shoestring operation with volunteers and writers who are not paid.
Feinstein voiced her concern “that the current version of the bill would grant a special privilege to people who aren’t really reporters at all, who have no professional qualifications,” like bloggers and citizen journalists.
Last week, Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, worried the Shield Law, if passed, would be used to protect whistleblowers and others who ferret out government corruption.
“The world has changed. We’re very careful in this bill to distinguish journalists from those who shouldn’t be protected, WikiLeaks and all those, and we’ve ensured that,” Schumer said. “But there are people who write and do real journalism, in different ways than we’re used to. They should not be excluded from this bill.”
The bill moving through Congress would require the Justice Department to notify reporters it decides to monitor. The law would allow Justice Department officials to delay notice for a period of 45 days. In addition, it would permit the DOJ to ask for an extension of 45 days.
In May, it was learned that the Justice Department had illegally seized the phone records of Associated Press journalists over a two month period. Obama’s Justice Department did not provide notice or a court-issued warrant prior to violating the confidentiality of the journalists.
In response to criticism of the illegal surveillance of journalists, Justice Department boss Eric Holder presented rule changes to the White House in July. The changes will require that journalists involved in “ordinary news-gathering activities” cannot be served with a warrant connected to their own investigative work unless the journalist in question is the subject of a criminal investigation.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/feinstein-youre-not-a-real-journalist-unless-you-draw-a-salary.html
Yoshito Matsushige, photographer of iconic Hiroshima bombing pictures
the American military confiscated all of the post-bomb prints, just as they seized the Japanese newsreel footage,
Journalist Took Five Historic Pictures—That Must Never Be Repeated The Nation, Greg Mitchell on August 8, 2013 Yoshito Matsushige, a photographer for the Chugoku Shimbun, took the only pictures in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, that have surfaced since. It was these five photos Life magazine published on September 29, 1952, hailing them as the “First Pictures—Atom Blasts Through Eyes of Victims,” breaking the long media blackout on graphic images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On August 6, 1945, Matsushige wandered around Hiroshima for ten hours, carrying one of the few cameras that survived the atomic bombing and two rolls of film with twenty-four possible exposures. This was no ordinary photo opportunity. He lined up one gripping shot after another, but he could only push the shutter seven times. Continue reading
A critical review of nuclear advertising film “Pandora’s Promise”
Finally (as Beyond Nuclear and other watchdog groups have noted), relying on nuclear power to mitigate CO2-driven climate change is unaffordable and impractical since it would require putting a new reactor online every two weeks……
Ultimately, Pandora’s Promise comes across as a well-executed but disingenuous exercise in special pleading. Instead of devoting 89 minutes to honestly and fully assessing the pros and cons of renewable technologies alongside the risks and benefits of new, untried nuclear power systems,Pandora’s Promise promotes a narrow agenda. As a result, the film winds up as little more than a tunnel-vision exercise in “plutonium Pollyannaism.”
Another Take on Pandora’s Promise EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL BY GAR SMITH – JUNE 28, 2013 Pro-nuclear power film obscures as much as it reveals You’ve got to give the producers of Pandora’s Promise credit for gumption. It takes a lot of chutzpah to release a pro-nuclear polemic in the wake of the triple meltdown in Fukushima, Japan. The film also suffered the ignominy of opening the same week that the owners of California’s troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station announced the permanent shutdown of the facility’s two crippled reactors. Even the film’s title takes a bit of nerve; it was Pandora’s Box, after all, that unleashed a host of once-contained evils into the world.
So, given the extensive history of nuclear mishaps and near-catastrophes, how do the producers of Pandora’s Promise manage to spin their counter-narrative of a “safe, green” nuclear future? Basically by: (1) at first accepting the criticisms of traditional nuclear power and then (2) arguing that the solution lies in “new, improved” nuclear reactors. Like a smart defense attorney, director Robert Stone begins by admitting all of the defendant’s worst foibles up front, thereby depriving the prosecution of an opportunity to score points by revealing these issues later…….
The filmmakers pronounce the radioactive contamination “infinitesimal” and proclaim there has been “no evidence of medical consequences.” No citations are offered to support this positive conclusion. The fact that 40 percent of Fukushima’s evacuated children have subsequently developed thyroid abnormalities goes unmentioned. Continue reading
Mainstream media joins in corporate cheering for war, and against freedom of speech
An Interview With Julian Assange, the Nation, Chris Hedges, 8 May 13″…….The press of a nation at war, in every conflict I covered, is an enthusiastic part of the machine, cheerleaders for slaughter and tireless mythmakers for war and the military. The few renegades within the press who refuse to wave the flag and slavishly lionize the troops, who will not endow them with a host of virtues including heroism, patriotism and 
courage, find themselves pariahs in newsrooms and viciously attacked—like Assange and Manning—by the state.
As a reporter at The New York Times, I was among those expected to prod sources inside the organs of power to provide information, including top-secret information. The Pentagon Papers, released to the Times in 1971, and the Times’s Pulitzer-winning 2005 exposure of the warrantless wiretapping of US citizens by the National Security Council used “top secret” documents—a classification more restricted than the lower-level “secret” designation of the documents released by WikiLeaks. But as the traditional press atrophies with dizzying speed—effectively emasculated by Barack Obama’s use of the Espionage Act half a dozen times since 2009 to target whistleblowers like Thomas Drake—it is left to the renegades, people like Assange and Manning, to break down walls and inform the public.
The cables that WikiLeaks released, as disturbing as they were, invariably put a pro-unit or pro-US spin on events. The reality in war is usually much worse. Those counted as dead enemy combatants are often civilians. Military units write their own after-action reports and therefore attempt to justify or hide their behavior. Despite the heated rhetoric of the state, no one has provided evidence that anything released by WikiLeaks cost lives. Then–Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in a 2010 letter to Senator Carl Levin conceded this point. He wrote Levin: “The initial assessment in no way discounts the risk to national security. However, the review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by the disclosure.”
The New York Times, The Guardian, El País, Le Mondeand Der Spiegel giddily printed redacted copies of some of the WikiLeaks files and then promptly threw Assange and Manning to the sharks. It was not only morally repugnant, but also stunningly shortsighted. Do these news organizations believe that if the state shuts down organizations such as WikiLeaks and imprisons Manning and Assange, traditional news outlets will be left alone? Can’t they connect the dots between the prosecutions of government whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act, warrantless wiretapping, monitoring of communications and the persecution of Manning and Assange? Don’t they worry that when the state finishes with Manning, Assange and WikiLeaks, these atrophied news outlets will be next? Haven’t they realized that this is a war by a global corporate elite not against an organization or an individual but against the freedom of the press and democracy?……..http://www.thenation.com/article/174227/interview-julian-assange#
Japanese media hides the truth about Fukushima
Bad news Has the media hidden the truth about Fukushima? Number 1 Shimbun 2 May 13, David McNeill, Two years after the Fukushima nuclear crisis began, two media experts dissect how it has been covered by the media. Takashi Uesugi is a freelance journalist and author of several books on the Fukushima crisis, including Terebi Wa Naze Heiki De Uso Wo Tsukunoka? (“Why does television tell so many lies?”). He is also one of the founders of The Free Press Association of Japan (www.fpaj.jp), an attempt to offer an alternative to Japan’s press club system. Mamoru Ito is professor of media and cultural studies at Waseda University and author of Terebi Wa Genpatsu Jiko Dou Tsutaetenoka? (“How did television cover the nuclear accident?). Both are highly critical of the media’s performance.
Uesugi-san, is it true that you have been banned from the media because of your comments on Fukushima?
Until two years ago, I had regular programs on television and radio. Now the only regular radio that I do is Tokyo FM. I don’t do TBS radio [where he had a regular slot]. I have no hope of appearing on NHK or on the commercial networks. I used to be a regular or semi-regular on several shows but now not even once. I was also a regular guest on radio shows, but not anymore.
I found out two years ago that the electric utilities in Japan are major TV sponsors. That year, they spent ¥70~88.8 billion on advertising, more than Panasonic’s ¥70 billion and Toyota’s ¥50 billion. When I started claiming that this amounted to bribery of the media by Tepco, I no longer was asked to appear on radio shows……… http://no1.fccj.ne.jp/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=870
Media and Advertising Stifle the Truth on Japan’s Nuclear Industry
Japan’s Media, Mega-Ad Agencies, & Nuclear Industry: A Lethal Combination? BY NATHALIE-KYOKO STUCKY AND JAKE ADELSTEIN , NOVEMBER 17, 2012 ·
Ryu Honma, author of Dentsu and the Nuclear Coverage (電通と原発の報道) spoke at the FCCJ a few weeks ago and his explanation of how Japan’s powerful advertising agencies, “the fifth estate”, stifled unfavorable coverage of nuclear power was eye-opening.
The collusive role between Japan’s major advertising agencies, the media, and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)–one of the largest advertisers in Kanto while having a monopoly on electric power—has been blamed for allowing TEPCO to get away with unsafe practices and malfeasance for years. Some have argued that Japan’s major media, bloated on a diet of TEPCO advertising dollars, failed to fulfill their role as monitor and critic of the nuclear industry. A recently published book about Dentsu (電通）Japan’s largest advertising agency and their impact on Japan’s reporting on nuclear power was released this year and stirred up controversy. However, except for one or two magazines, just like the book, TEPCO/The Dark Empire東京電力：帝国の暗黒–the book has been ignored by the major media outlets it criticizes…..
In his book “Dentsu and the Nuclear Coverage,” Ryu Honma offers a clear insight about the great influence Dentsu and Hakuhodo have had on the media coverage of Japan’s nuclear power plant safety issues. Continue reading
Media keep mum about barrels in Lake Superior – ?radioactive
Paper: News blackout over mystery barrels in Lake Superior — Purplish ooze, bouncing Geiger counters reported — No ‘immediate’ health threat to public http://enenews.com/paper-news-blackout-over-mystery-barrels-in-lake-superior-reports-of-purplish-ooze-bouncing-geiger-counters-no-immediate-health-threat-to-public February 23rd, 2013
Title: Our view: New mysteries emerge in big-lake barrel saga
Source: Duluth News Tribune
Date: February 22, 2013
h/t Anonymous tip
Our view: New mysteries emerge in big-lake barrel saga
[…] 1,400 barrels dumped in [Lake Superior] in the late 1950s and early 1960s not far from the Duluth-Superior Harbor. The Department of Defense barrels were said to hold scrap metal from a grenade project the U.S. was eager to keep secret from the Soviets. But reports of purplish ooze, bouncing Geiger counters and more long fueled speculation, concern and even conspiracy theorists.
The [Red Cliff Band of Chippewa] recovered only 25 barrels, and it did so under what was called a “news blackout.” No media was allowed near the recovery work and there were no briefings with reporters about what was going on or what was found. A “safety zone” kept curious boats well away.
“We need to stay focused on the work rather than informing the public,” Red Cliff Environmental Director Melonee Montano said in an August story in the News Tribune. […]
In January, the band did say there were no “immediate (health) threats or concerns to the public,” an assurance it reiterated a month later. […]
A Tribune editorial from 2012: Duluth Newspaper: Maybe Yucca Mountain-type nuclear waste dump should be in Minnesota, Wisconsin or Michigan instead — Sounds scary, but is it?
Japan Mass Media Banned From Reporting Radiation Dangers
In contrast to official Japanese government policy which allows 20 millisieverts of annual background radiation, a joint French and Japanese NGO project found that “external radiation” continues to cause “unacceptable health risks for hundreds of thousands of citizens” and that government estimates ignore internal consumption of radionuclides through food, water and air.
Powerful Lies – The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster And The Radioactive Effects On Human Health By Richard Wilcox PhD 2-22-13 Rense.com, “……. How many people will die from Fukushima nuclear meltdown radiation? Two years have passed since Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster. Every day we learn of more evidence of the dangers of low-level radiation from a variety of natural and man-made causes, including medical x-rays and scans (11; 12). Our health, and particularly the health of people in Fukushima, is under increasing distress.
We now see evidence of children with thyroid cancer from the Fukushima area . It has also been revealed that the mass media in Japan is unofficially BANNED from discussing radiation issues. Journalists who write about radiation dangers will be fired whereas they are permitted to debate whether Japan should use nuclear energy or not .
The latter debate is permissible because it is long-term and changeable depending on the whims of government policy and manipulation of public sentiment. Serious discussion of radiation danger strikes fear in the heart of the public, and may also lead to costly liability payments, and is therefore taboo. Undoubtedly, the ban on discussing the danger of radiation in the media translates into public ignorance about radiation. It is astonishing to me that most of the people I talk to in Tokyo are only dimly aware that radiation is entering their bodies on a daily basis: from public water supply, food, drinks, ongoing air pollution emissions from the FNPP, and the burning of radioactive debris in public incinerators. People think that it is only a small risk. Continue reading
Youtube: Japan’s media censorship of Fukushima radiation news
Youtube: How Japanese media censors information about Fukushima nuckear radiation Issues of Radioactive Exposure are Considered Taboo on Japanese Media https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHtbi1Q4aZ8
Watch: Japanese journalists reveal radiation cover-up after Fukushima (VIDEO) http://enenews.com/watch-japanese-journalists-reveal-radiation-cover-up-after-fukushima-video Title: Issues of Radioactive Exposure are Considered Taboo on Japanese Media
Source: World Network for Saving Children from Radiation
Date Recorded: Dec. 20, 2012
Date Published: Feb. 13, 2013
Takashi Uesugi, Journalist: I can only write about the reality of nuclear power […] Anything implying the danger of radiation is not [accepted].
Kazuhiro Haraguchi, former Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications: It is still taboo to talk about radiation exposure […] In June 2011 […] we also demanded the government evacuate at least women and children. […] I think it is the Japanese government [that made it a taboo to discuss radiation exposure].
Watch the video here
Japan’s government curtails press freedom about Fukushima nuclear situation
Nuclear power and press freedom, Japan Times, FEB 10, 2013 Japan fell
from 22nd place to 53rd in the rankings of press freedom last year,
according to the nonprofit organization Reporters Without Borders.
Japan’s plummet was attributed to a single factor — the lack of access
to information related to the disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s
Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
In the past, Japan could be relatively proud of its reputation for
press freedom compared with that of most countries. But being ranked
lower lately than countries such as El Salvador or Haiti is an
embarrassing reminder that press freedom can quickly erode under
pressure from the government and corporations.
In reporting on the serious disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear
power plant, many reporters have met with restricted access, lack of
transparency and even lawsuits. Continue reading
Iceland’s step forward for freedom of information
Iceland wants to be seen as the ideal place for online media and data storage banks to locate their servers in order to shield themselves from the threats of censorship, filtering and closure, and to provide the best protection for the personal data of their users.
NEW LEGISLATION TO PROVIDE EXEMPLARY PROTECTION FOR FREEDOM OF INFORMATION 21 JUNE 2010. HTTP://EN.RSF.ORG/ISLANDE-NOUVEL-ARTICLE-18-06-2010,37771.HTML Iceland’s parliament, the Alpinghi, has unanimously approved a resolution known as the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI) that calls on the government to draft legislation in line with its recommendations for the protection of media, journalists and bloggers.
Reporters Without Borders hails this ambitious and positive initiative, adopted on 15 June, and calls on the government to do its utmost to respect the parliament’s will when it drafts the law.
“This proposal is on the right track,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It regards freedom of expression as a fundamental right and would create optimal conditions for investigative journalism. Even if the precise impact of this proposed law remains to be seen, especially as regard journalists’ legal protection, Iceland has established itself as a pioneer.”
The press freedom organisation added: “We hope this will serve as an example to other governments. It is certainly a promising departure from the general tendency, especially in democratic countries, for press freedom to be eroded and for harassment of journalists and their sources to increase.” Continue reading
1 This Month
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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