Is Chernobyl Still Dangerous? Was 60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda?

An anonymous reader writes: This article has an interesting take on how the media is presenting the current Chernobyl situation. Its author, Ron Adams, is a long time nuclear advocate, so read with that in mind. Adams critiques a recent CBS 60 Minutes broadcast that took pains to show how dangerous the area still is. He writes, "The show is full of fascinating contrasts between what the cameras show to the audience and what the narrator tells the audience that they should believe. ... I correspond with a number of experts in fields related to radiation, radioactive waste management, site restoration, and the health effects of low level radiation. There has been quite a bit of discussion about the misinformation propagated by this particular 60 Minutes segment."

Comments

60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda?

[fustakrakich]

No way!

Yes way!

They do get better...

Re:60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda?

[fustakrakich]

I wouldn't know. All of mass media has been pushing propaganda since it became mass media... The rest is just gossip...

Re:60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda?

[some old guy]

Precisely. As we used to say in the Navy, "Don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see."

Re:60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda?

[AmiMoJo]

The first two root comments posted are both ad-hominem attacks on 60 Minutes. I've noticed this is pretty common on Slashdot these last few years - every comment section begins with some ad-homs against TFA, become the real debate begins further down. It's as if those early commentators hadn't even RTFA.

Re:60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda?

[Anonymous Coward]

Walter Cronkite, "The most trusted man in America", is one of the greatest journalists to ever live.
To say he had no credibility is only to prove how ignorant you are.

in fact it so colors you that we can safely assume you believe that the "mainstream media" has a liberal bias (which also indicates you have no idea what "liberal" even means), instead of a corporate one, and that you further believe that Fox isnt part of the mainstream media, even though its rating and audience and influence are larger than all the other news channels.

Re:60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda?

[Anonymous Coward]

Walter Cronkite, "The most trusted man in America", is one of the greatest journalists to ever live.
To say he had no credibility is only to prove how ignorant you are.

in fact it so colors you that we can safely assume you believe that the "mainstream media" has a liberal bias (which also indicates you have no idea what "liberal" even means), instead of a corporate one, and that you further believe that Fox isnt part of the mainstream media, even though its rating and audience and influence are larger than all the other news channels.

Wow, in response to a post about CBS pushing propaganda. you demonstrate that you swallowed it all - hook, line, and sinker.

Walter Cronkite Biography Reveals His Dark Side

Re:60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda?

[msauve]

"And in the US of A, a corporation is legally a person. No, I'm not kidding."

No. a corporation can't vote, and does not have all of the rights of a natural person. It is true that for many laws, corporations are included in the definition of "person," but that's not the same as saying they are persons legally - there are limits and exceptions.

Re:60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda?

[taustin]

Walter Cronkite, "The most trusted man in America", is one of the greatest journalists to ever live.
To say he had no credibility is only to prove how ignorant you are.

Cronkite's hero was Edward R. Murrow, who was the giant whose shoulders Cronkite stood on.

in fact it so colors you that we can safely assume you believe that the "mainstream media" has a liberal bias (which also indicates you have no idea what "liberal" even means), instead of a corporate one, and that you further believe that Fox isnt part of the mainstream media, even though its rating and audience and influence are larger than all the other news channels.

Indeed. News is a business, and it is, by and large, an advertising business. In other words, the viewer isn't the customer, the advertiser is. And the predominate marketing strategy for the news business for the last several decades has been to scream at us "WATCH OUR PROGRAM OR YOU WILL DIE!!! AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL BE EATEN BY DINGOS AND SOMEONE WILL KICK YOUR DOG!!!!"

Because that's what the audience will tune in for. Retarded hysteria. Says more about the audience than the news programs, but it says a lot about the news programs. And all of it is bad.

What a shock

[epyT-R]

60 minutes regularly misrepresents facts for the sake of drama or propping up political narratives. I guess even chernobyl wasn't 'scary' enough for them to resist embellishing it.

Re:What a shock

[AmiMoJo]

Just because people are doing it doesn't make it safe, it just makes them ignorant.

It's true that the risk from consuming small amounts of produce from the area is low. If you are a reporter visiting for a while the risk is low, but if you live there it's a different story. Children are at particular risk, but even adults who allow long lived radioactive particles to accumulate in their bodies are facing an increased risk of health problems.

Those people are poor and desperate, and the danger isn't visible to them. It's sad that they are even allowed to live and farm there, instead of being helped to build a life somewhere safer. Stunts like feeding journalists unsafe food just encourage more people to do it.

Re:What a shock

[vivian]

There are plenty of smokers who don't die of cancer, so that must also be safe, right?

Yes

[Billly Gates]

A popular website now gone showed the readings to the exclusion zone 10 years ago.

While I got modded down for saying it is dangerous here as this is a pro nuclear site there are areas near the plant where the radiation is 100x as high as other parts of the zone. Trees to this day show genetic aberrations in areas near the plant regardless of the thriving ecosystem developing in the nearbye Ukrainian city.

Safe to visit the abandoned city of Prypiat but I would not want to live there and drink the water, get near the plant, or risk having dust on a windy day get near my face or food.

Re:YEs, its safe

[TsuruchiBrian]

Yes I'm sure he would not mind moving his whole family to a remote area in a foreign country, sacrificing his career, relationships with friends and family, just to prove a point. Of course if he doesn't do this, we should definitely assume it's because he is a liar and secretly agrees that Chernobyl is very dangerous.

TFA is missing a few things...

[DerekLyons]

From TFS: "There has been quite a bit of discussion about the misinformation propagated by this particular 60 Minutes segment."

But somehow... he never actually gets around to telling us what any of those things are. Instead, the bulk of the article is dedicated to snide ad hominem attacks on the reporter. The article headline asks "Is Chernobyl still dangerous or was 60 Minutes pushing propaganda?", but places essentially all of it's effort on the latter portion of the question.

In short, it's a deeply biased article from a deeply biased source.

Re:Interesting how quickly people forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at me! I ride a motorcyle, rented a geiger counter and went around Priyat with a geiger counter, wrote down some readings and took photos of abandoned buildings just like the hundreds of other tourists per year.

The area is well studied by actual scientists who conducted actual research. I'll trust their assessments. I don't need any ignorant opinions by tourists pretending to be scientists. By your standards taking a few photos of the Tower of London and Big Ben while on vacation in England would make you a knowledgeable scholar of English history.

Attack the messenger

[MrL0G1C]

Rod Adams has a hard time attacking what the 60mins guy says so he goes on a long attack against the man himself.

He then implies that being 10,000 times more radioative than normal is no big deal.

He also seems to have avoided noticing that lumps of metal cannot move or become airborne without some kind of driving force or that materials inside buildings â" even poorly maintained buildings â" do not harm people who are outside of the buildings.

He then comes up with an absurd fallacious argument stating that the area is safe because buildings and metals are solid so this somehow makes the area safe, serious WTF here, the guy is an complete idiot if he thinks this is sound reasoning. This didn't stop the mice becoming 10,000x more radioactive did it?

If Chernobyl is so safe then why are they building a new billion dollar sarcophagus around it. If "lumps of metal cannot move or become airborne" then why are they building a new billion dollar sarcophagus around it?

In all, Rod Adams page is full of drivel, no fact is sensibly debated or shown to be wrong, he 'reads into this' new facts that never existed, he attacks 60mins and it's presenter because there is nothing in the video worth attacking.

He concludes with a quote from someone saying they would trusts 60mins facts less in the future. I conclude that Rod Adams is a nuclear zealot who is no good at science and so attacks the people who state anything he doesn't agree with, rather than having the intelligence to deconstruct the message and debate it in any meaningful way.