The Nuclear Industry and the Media – theme for March 2017

Today’s news media is a smorgasbord of online blogs,Facebook. Twitter, Youtube, Linked-In and a hundred other online sites. Oh, and yes, there are still some online, and even print, newspapers. You remember those last. They employed reputable investigative journalists, who did fact-checking about their news sources.

With journalists dropping off employment like flies, anyone can write anything – no fact-checking needed. It might be fabricated. It ‘s likely to be biased and inaccurate.

The “old media” – newspapers, radio, TV have long been vulnerable to uncritically disseminating propaganda articles from industry. Even more so, now, as they struggle financially. Industry handouts are much cheaper than real journalism. That situation is a boon to the nuclear lobby.

The “new media” is also a boon to the nuclear industry. They already pay lobbyists,Twitter and Facebook users, and especially Youtube-ers to daily spin out propaganda items by the hundreds. Nuclear lobbyists make use of “bots” to send tweets in multiples, which actually come from just one software programme. At the same time, nuclear companies continue to produce glossy, expensive, sophisticated films and TV series. Their latest effort will hit the cinemas soon – The New Fire.

As if this media revolution were not enough, the nuclear industry now receives a new bonus, the rise of fascism, pioneered by Donald Trump, and perhaps soon to hit Europe and other countries. With an uncanny and Goebbels-like ability to home in on the right places in the media landscape, Trump makes brilliant use of Twitter. Doesn’t matter if his tweets are lies – they are regurgitated across the world, and believed in by many.

Like all dictators, Trump’s first attack is on the media. Any journalism that Trump doesn’t like is “Fake Press”. Reputable credible news sources like CNN and New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Politico, the BBC, Huffington Post and BuzzFeed News. are now “enemies of the people” , and banned from White House media briefings. Instead, Trump
crony publications like Breitbart are welcomed.

What does this mean for the nuclear industry? Well. probably Trump-dominated media will be a positive for them. Let’s not forget, Donald Trump is in power, for now, under suffrance from the Republican Party on behalf of the richest industrialists.

What does it all mean for us, writers and readers who seek genuine information?

Judith Donath of CNN said it for me:

“help promote a culture that reveres veracity. Check your sources before you post anything. Support newspapers and other organizations that do good, reliable reporting. Discourage people in your own community when they promote stories that feel good to you, but are, alas, untrue.“ http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/20/opinions/fake-news-stories-thrive-donath/

March 6, 2017 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized

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the Commissioners of the AUKUS Public Inquiry present their findings at the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra. iview.abc.net.au/show/national-press-club-address