Check out this article from Japan Times. Man, and I thought BP was bad. This is one of those cases where being limited to 4 paragraphs just doesn't do it justice at all.
Tight-lipped TEPCO lays bare exclusivity of press clubsIt was a shocking revelation for a majority of the people in Japan, but maybe not so for major media organizations.
Tsunehisa Katsumata, chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Co., admitted in a news conference on March 30 that on the 11th, the day the twin disasters hit the Tohoku region and crippled Tepco's Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, he was traveling to Beijing with retired Japanese journalists, expenses for which were partially paid by the utility.
"We probably paid more than our share" of the travel fee, Katsumata said.
Internet reporter Ryusaku Tanaka was shouted down by other journalists as he tried to question the Tepco executive.
The incident laid bare the oft-assumed cozy relationship between Tepco and major Japanese media organizations — members of the exclusive "kisha" (press) club that critics claim are preventing reporters from asking the utility tough questions about the nuclear accident. Similar complicity has long been assumed at other press clubs attached to the nation's various bureaucratic bodies.
--snip--
The whole article is a very interesting read and probably not surprising given Japanese culture. And while I'm normally not too interested in just how much of a lap-dog the Japanese press is, in this case it's pretty damned important. For instance, plutonium.
For weeks nobody asked TEPCO about their MOX fuel (which has plutonium in it). When they did ask about a plutonium leak (because the whole fucking building had blown up), TEPCO admitted that
they didn't have a detector to check it.
I'm not making that up, read the article. That's even more fucked up than I imagined.
PB
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
