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Ref. : Letters to the editor
08.16 Out Damn Blot: A Letter to Colin Powell
08.14 The End of Cheap Oil: The Future is Now
08.31 Lady and the Gramp: The Sinister Diversion of the Palin Selection
08.28 Media Cheer Biden Choice
08.27 War With Russia Is On The Agenda
08.26 Appalling "New Look" for The Sun Signals Abdication of Journalistic Standards
08.21 Mixed Truth of the Russia-Georgia War
08.16 John McCain's Party of Hate
08.15 Corporate Media Bashes New Chavez Enabling Law Decrees
08.15 Georgia/Russia Conflict Forced Into Cold War Frame
08.13 WPost and the Great Disconnect
08.12 WPost Admits Bungling Obama Quote
09.05 Going on an Imperial Bender
09.05 Meet the Truth-Challenged GOP Vice Presidential Candidate: Sure A. Pallin'
09.04 The Anti-Obama Hate-Fest
09.04 Palin's 'Reformer' Myth
09.03 Did Palin Family Feud Affect Troopers?
09.02 Palin's Trouble with the Police
09.01 Minnesota Monster Mash: Police-State Zombies in a Dead Republic
08.31 Of All the Reasons McCain’s Palin Pick is Awful, Evidence of Her Abuse of Power is the Worst
08.30 McCain VP Pick Has History of Clashes
08.29 Great Speech, Big Questions, and a Curve Ball from McCain
08.28 Tongue of Flame: A Speech Presaging Endless War
08.28 Biden, Obama and The Blood-Dimmed Tide
08.28 Foreign Policy and National Security Are Not the Same Thing
08.27 Judge Rebuffs White House Immunity
08.27 What a McCain Victory Would Mean
08.22 Maybe We Should Just Hope the Republicans Win This Thing...
08.22 Loserville - Obama moves right
08.21 McCain's Ties to Neocon Hard Lines
08.21 Peace Mom v. Guardian of Power
08.20 Are You Ready For Nuclear War?
08.19 A Book Written to Defeat Obama
08.19 McCain's 'Cone of Silence' Caper
08.14 Is Perpetual War Our Future?
08.12 5 Years After Blackout, Power Grid Still in 'Dire Straits'
08.12 Olympic Shame
08.12 Thinking About Intermissions
08.11 ‘Medaling’ With Free Speech at the Olympics
08.11 Targeting Immigrants - The Largest Ever US ICE Raid
09.04 Rebel Yell: Resistance and Renaissance in the Age of Terror
09.04 Katrina Redux
08.25 The Smash of Civilizations
08.22 Priming the Pump With Missile Defense: Empty Gestures Full of Blood
08.20 Musharraf, Not Bush, Follows Nixon
08.18 Fear, Procurement, Profit: Permanent War and the American Way
08.17 This Time, the World Is Not Buying It
08.15 'Imminent' Threats Should Be a Belli Laugh
09.03 Putin's Ruthless Gambit
09.01 Stoking Tensions, Risking Confrontation: A High Stakes US Gamble with Russia
08.28 Bush Escalates Tensions with Russia
08.28 Torture As Official Israeli Policy
08.25 Thinking About Cement
08.25 Reinventing the Evil Empire
08.18 Blockades: Acts of War
08.17 Rice’s Recipe for Duck Soup
08.14 The Lawless Roads: Bluster in Georgia, Rank Tyranny at Home
08.14 Marching Through Georgia V: U.S. Forces Moving Into Putin's Powderkeg
08.14 Marching Through Georgia IV: The Butt Thumper and the Bear
08.13 Using Georgia to Target Russia
08.12 From Stupid to Moronic to Evil
08.11 Marching Through Georgia III: Reality's Rout and Cheney's Viagra
08.11 Marching Through Georgia II: The Kremlin Surge
MEDIA CRITICISM:
CBS's Nuclear Revival
60 Minutes' critic-free boosterism
Guests on the segment were French energy official Pierre Gadonniex, French nuclear industry executive Bertrande Durrande, White House deputy secretary of energy Clay Sell (Bush's "point man on nuclear power"), French nuclear executive Anne Lauvergeon, MIT nuclear researcher Andrew Kadak and David Jhirhad of the World Resources Institute, described as "an environmental think tank in Washington."
Jhirhad was the only potentially balancing source, but he is quoted only to make Kroft's point that "even some environmental groups are taking a second look at nuclear power." This is an emerging line in much of the corporate media (e.g., Washington Post, 4/16/06; New York Times, 2/27/07), though the actual number of green groups embracing nuclear power is quite small. The World Resources Institute receives contributions from several energy companies and other major polluters, information that would have been useful for CBS viewers in evaluating Jhirad's claim that the nuclear industry's "safety record has been pretty good."
The segment's one-sided sourcing was made all the more problematic when the White House's Sell claimed that "no serious person can look at the challenge of greenhouse gases and climate change and not come to the conclusion that nuclear power has to play a significant and growing role in meeting that challenge worldwide." Of course, "serious people" do question precisely that--and CBS should have interviewed them.
Excluding such sources meant excluding important information. While France's nuclear power is portrayed as widely popular, CBS failed to mention large protests held across the country on March 17 (Agence France Presse, 3/17/07) against construction of a new nuclear plant. Nor, in touting the massive nuclear reprocessing plant France has built in Normandy, did the show refer to the radiation it releases into the English Channel (NIRS Nuclear Monitor, 3-4/00) or the cluster of leukemia cases occurring around the plant (British Medical Journal, 1/11/97).
Kroft even adopts industry-friendly language in describing the push to revive U.S. nuclear power, discussing the "financial incentives" and "streamlined regulatory system" intended to encourage nuclear energy development. Such "incentives" might better be described as government subsides, which have long been criticized by nuclear industry critics as a waste of taxpayers' money. Unmentioned in the CBS report were similar subsidies in France; according to the U.S.-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (5/4/06), $1 billion a year in government subsidies go to plutonium production alone.
Excluding critical voices allowed grossly misleading information to go unchallenged, as when nuclear executive Lauvergeon claimed, in the segment's conclusion, that "wind and solar are, you know, temporary sources of energy. It works when you have wind, it works when you have sun. No sun, no wind, no energy. You don't want to watch TV only when you have wind." Of course, wind and solar energy are not "temporary" sources of energy; power generated by both can be stored. Airing this sort of misinformation eliminates any real consideration of viable alternatives to nuclear energy.
At one point, Kroft says that "the Bush administration is pushing a nuclear revival." The same could be said for CBS.
ACTION:
Contact 60 Minutes to ask why its report on nuclear energy excluded the views of the industry's numerous critics.
CONTACT:
CBS 60 Minutes
60m@cbsnews.com
(212) 975-3247
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.
This story was published on April 18, 2007.
