Sensational, poor reporting of Tohoku Earthquake

[bikkuri bahn]

Someone has set up a web page documenting some of the poor reporting done by the Western media/press on events in eastern Japan.  I live in Japan, so I don't see most of this stuff obviously, nor do I usually read western internet news reports about Japan, mainly because the average reporter assigned to Japan is piss poor and ignorant about things here (or perhaps they're decent but their editors are looking for sensational stories).

 

http://jpquake.wikispaces.com/Journalist+Wall+of+Shame

[Bernard]

BB - When I studied journalism in college eons ago, there were basic principles we were taught to follow....with Rupurt Murdock, you can take all those principles and throw them out the window. In my opinion, a lot of reports don't report, they make themselves part of the story, and will ask questions that with get a reaction or that is there is no correct answer for. They also want to be the 1st ones to have an exclusive report without checking the facts first.

[spacecadet]

The map with "Shibuya Eggman" as one of Japan's nuclear plants (one of the items at that site) was floating around the net as a funny for a little while...

[traindork]

I remember watching Wolf Blitzer on CNN right after the quake interviewing Japan's ambassador to the US, and Wolf was extremely rude and insistant that the nuclear plant was about to blow up, while the Japanese ambassador kept saying that it wasn't so bad.

 

There was a story that a local news channel did here about a "runaway train". What they actually saw was a DPU, a locomotive at the end of the train that is controlled by radio from the front locomotive. I see them all the time. The reporter never bothered to call the railroad to see what was going on. Unfortunately, they pulled the video from their website.

I don't believe the news anymore. Too many hidden agendas and just plain laziness.

[cteno4]

our big news radio station here in dc put their foot in it as well and you would expect they have a bit more experience with news than most places being here in dc. when the first hydrogen explosion happened at the plant they reported a nuclear explosion. no correction or retraction later. mistakes like that are just plain sloppy or done to incite/scare the audience. if done by mistake, they just move on and never set things straight...

 

cheers

 

jeff

[brill27mcb]

I remember watching Wolf Blitzer on CNN right after the quake interviewing Japan's ambassador to the US, and Wolf was extremely rude and insistant that the nuclear plant was about to blow up, while the Japanese ambassador kept saying that it wasn't so bad.

 

There was a story that a local news channel did here about a "runaway train". What they actually saw was a DPU, a locomotive at the end of the train that is controlled by radio from the front locomotive. I see them all the time. The reporter never bothered to call the railroad to see what was going on. Unfortunately, they pulled the video from their website.

 

I don't believe the news anymore. Too many hidden agendas and just plain laziness.

 

My wife found a bumper sticker that says a lot: "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere stupidity."

[KenS]

Well, it's stupidity to report a hydrogen explosion as a nuclear explosion or a remote-controlled loco as a runaway.  But failing to run a correction later (which is something you'd always see in the old-school newspapers when they made a reporting error, but rarely if ever see on TV now, where time is at a premium) does push it closer to malice.  Correcting errors is part of what gives news reporting credibility.  Without that, they're not being journalists, just gossips.

 

Unfortunately, that's what the big news companies seem to believe most viewers want.