Japan – a few stray thoughts
by Steve
I’ve mulled over whether to post anything about the events in Japan for a few days now. It is hard to think of anything meaningful or worthwhile to add. While “meaning” or “worth” are pretty flimsy concepts when it comes to most of my silly blogging topics, this is obviously quite different. In the grand scheme of things, what does my opinion matter? And why should I be even thinking in those terms in the face of thousands of deaths and a major nuclear crisis?
But how we react to disasters or tragedies seems to be an issue. There is a real difficulty in placing such events into a meaningful context.
Twenty-four hour news hypes the smallest happenings as BREAKING NEWS. I remember when a television newsflash was a clear indicator of a major, often historic, news story breaking.
Now it is not so simple. How many people took all of Friday to realise how serious the earthquake and tsunami were? How many people are wary of taking any meltdown talk seriously? How many people are so desensitised to news that they just don’t take an interest?
Conversely, the immediacy of the internet and rolling news has (potentially) brought us a greater insight into the disaster. Amateur footage, before/after satellite images and access to a wealth of experts has given us more information than we may have had in the past.
Yet, it still feels like we lack a filter to give the event a real meaning and context. It is a complex situation in Japan. Explaining nuclear technology and geology and disaster management is not straightforward. But without any guidance, interpretation or commentary, is this glut of information any use to us? Or does this abundance of media, which should bring us closer to the story, actually make it all the more incomprehensible?
Or perhaps such horror, such terror and such loss is incomprehensible no matter what the broader media offers us? Or maybe we need a degree of distance before we can properly start to make sense of events?
However, I do wonder if we will begin to ask questions of nuclear power, or preparing for natural disasters, or of how best to relay news. Beyond the incredible human toll of this disaster, will we be capable of learning from this disaster? Or will all this eventually be forgotten, hidden under yet another BREAKING NEWS banner? I hope not.
Wait until next year 
I tend to head fro radio when there are stories like these, possibly because the last time I sat glued to tv rolling news was September 11th and I felt a mixture of horror at what I was seeing and disgust with myself for consuming the images and the horror as though it were just a Hollywood production. 5Live has been very informative since Friday, bringing in all manner of experts and observers as well as adding in first hand accounts of the terrible events in Japan. I have learnt a lot, including the fact that the radioactive material in a nuclear reactor basically acts like a huge kettle element, heating up water to create steam to turn turbines to make electricity. Perhaps I ought to have known this before but I’m a recent convert to physics, having spent most of my life wrongly believing I had no aptitude or interest for the subject.
I hope that the immediacy of news coverage and media consumption is heading the human race in a direction which can eventually enable us to truly view the planet and all the people on it as a global village. It may be the only way we will finally overcome tribal, racial, terrirotial squabbling and move beyond destructive conflict. Idealistic I know and asking an awful lot of media to unify the species, but the alternatives are too ghastly to contemplate.
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I guess I should listen to radio news more. There certainly seems more space to explore news stories on the radio and give them the attention and depth of coverage they deserve. I think my problem with a lot of the TV and net coverage is that they are throwing snippets out there without any real meaning or context attached to them, and often with each item contradicting the last.
I can certainly relate to the ‘Hollywood’ issue, especially as so many disaster movies actually ape 24 news coverage. There is a point when some footage veers dangerously close to voyeurism.
“I hope that the immediacy of news coverage and media consumption is heading the human race in a direction which can eventually enable us to truly view the planet and all the people on it as a global village.”
It certainly is a lot to ask for, but we can hope. At least this disaster is being viewed a little more in global (and human) terms, rather than the “10,000 killed, no Britons hurt” whitewash we might have seen in the past when the media covered natural disasters overseas…
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I haven’t been able to turn on the TV since Friday. I heard people comparing the video footage of the tsunami to something out of a disaster movie, and I didn’t want to go down that road.
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I can understand that. There’s a fine line between wanting to find out about something, and just satisfying a morbid curiosity. I’ve certainly changed the channel when I’ve started to feel like I’m watching a disaster movie rather than the news.
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