Re: Educating Journalists

["PAUL E RUHTER" <RUH@inel.gov>]

Supervisor, Radiation Dosimetry & Records
User ID-RUH; Mail Stop-4147;  Ext. 6-1973
All may not be as black as it seems. During the last month, one of you
called attention to the series of articles in the Boston Globe on the
"Nuclear Twilight in New England". At that website, there was a poll
which allowed you to vote your opinion on Nuclear Power. The results of
that poll indicate that over 80% of the people voting were in favor of
nuclear power. I have learned that Collective Joe Voter most generally
has good judgement, but this surprised even me. Have you Radsafers been
stuffing the polling box?

*** Reply to note of 11/12/96 13:28
To: RADSAFE --INELMAIL RADSAFE

Subject: Re: Educating Journalists
At 12:32 12.11.1996 -0600, you wrote:
>David --
>
>I applaud your effort.  Regrettably, I am not optomistic, this being based
>on years of experience with the media and well over 1000 public
>presentations.  Simply stated, the media are biased.  A Pulitzer prize was
>won last year for a series on the plutonium injection cases in which the
>reporter revealed information that had I revealed, would have resulted in
>criminal action.  The ethics of the media, and their self styled perception
>of themselves in terms of their obligation of protecting the public is often
>in conflict with thew ethics of other professions (eg law, the clergy as
>well as scientists and engineers).  But, if I can help, let me know.
>
>Ron Kathren
==========================================================================

Ron,

I agree with you, but would like to extend your statement about criminal
action to the behaviour of so called "green groups". They live on media
presentation and to some extent the media live on the news that these groups
provide. Maybe you noticed that Greenpeace is now perfect in transmitting TV
clips directly from their place of action - sorry, not perfect, because a
certain amount of "not-perfectness" adds to the dramatic effect of the film
transmitted...... At least in Europe it is fashionable to break as many laws
as possible if it concerns the "environment", helps to save millions
(billions) of lifes intended to be sacrificed by the nuclear lobby for
profit, to save the planet from total destruction from ozone (or the lack of
ozone), from genetical modified food, from pesticides, nitrate ..... Add
what you like. If damage has been done, companies lost money because of the
green groups' intervention - this will not be prosecuted, because only
humanistic considerations have led to these damages and are therefore
"justified".

"Anti" groups live on the current public opinion. They usually manipulate
the public opinion with help of the mass media. Political groups are eager
to enter the competition of "who is greener".

Are you sure that "ordinary people" perceive the "anti"-messages? Do you
really believe that the average European cares for Chernobyl? There is a
very small percentage of activists and a very large percentage of
indifferent people. They are used to all kind of messages from the mass
media - regarding cancer risk, poisoning risk, radiation risk and so on -
but they observe that they still live in spite of all the danger.
Exaggerating news on nuclear hazards in the mass media are received the same
way as accidents from chemical plants, from car traffic, from aeroplane
crashes and so on. We radiation protection people are very sensitive to
anything on the massmedia about our profession - the average population
perceives this as another message among so many other topics. Nobody knows
about the LNT theory - I wrote this already once.

Even the "greens" adjust to public opinion - when it cannot be manipulated
any more regarding a certain subject. Then they find another one because
they have to raise money for future campaigns. Though the German press is
usually extremely positive to Greenpeace, I watched during the last months
quite a few contribution on German TV which were extremely critical towards
Greenpeace. Greenpeace is an international enterprise, which works very well
with emotions and it is more than well known, that Greenpeace does not
bother to distribute wrong analysis results in order to pretend concern
(this refers to the Brent Spar case). I am not fond of destruction of the
environment, I believe that many faults have been made in the past and
public concern has not been met adequately. You cannot tell a concerned
person, that he or she is silly, you have to explain, you have to be
patient. Any concerned person, who is convinced by your patient explanations
will be a messenger of what you said and distribute knowledge to many other
persons.

The "green groups" have to raise money, they have to address concerns, which
they might to some extent raise, but people get tired of listening to the
same items all the time. So they have to search for new ones. We had in
Austria for instance big campaigns against nuclear power plants in the Czech
republic and in Slovakia. Now these groups have concentrated on genetically
modified soya beens. News about plans to extend the number of NPPs to be
built have been  the matter of only halv hearted protests, because now the
genetically modified food is "in". Two green groups under the leadership of
Greenpeace have occupied the office of the Minister of Health and Consumer
Protection, distributing in the office all kind of products which are based
on soya beans, because the European Union is likely to accept import of
genetically modified soya beans. The minister did not call the police to
expell the persons, but stopped an official visit and came back to discuss
with the persons occupying her office.

Sorry for this long reasoning, which I think might be of interest for at
least a few radsafers. A certain conclusion might be that we have to be
patient, we should treat any inquiry from the public as a serious concern
and answer it accordingly. Time passes by and so do the topics of these
groups. Today it is radioactivity, it was the Brent Spar recently, it is now
genetically modified products. It will be something else tomorrow. We should
not overestimate the impact on people.

Franz



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