by Seth Stern
Rocky Mountain Collegian

An earthquake
centered 43 miles off the coast of Japan last March triggered a
tsunami that reached heights of more than 130 feet. The Japanese
coastal cities and towns were destroyed when the wave washed up
to six miles inland on March 11.

The widespread
destruction in Japan from the tidal wave, as well as the initial
destruction of the earthquake, was well documented by the television,
print and radio, aka “legacy,” aka “old” media.
Last week, several of the same outlets and many of the newer legacy
media channels reported the story of the Japanese teenagerÂ’s
soccer ball washing ashore in Alaska.

I have done
my best over the course of my time here with the Collegian to illustrate
how useless the mainstream media has become as a source of news.
They have become parodies of themselves and sensationalism, human
interest, breaking news and lazy journalism are their calling cards.

This is proven
in their coverage of the soccer ball story and initial damage of
the disaster. What they have utterly failed to appropriately report
is the ongoing situation caused by the earthquake at the Fukushima
nuclear facility.

As a Ron Paul
supporter, the mediaÂ’s failure to inform the public on the
facts of news is hardly a surprise. The man has been winning delegates
under the radar for a month, but you would only know this if you
went outside the legacy media to see for yourself; but I digress.

Ironically,
just a few days ago, April 26 in fact, marked the 26th anniversary
of the Chernobyl disaster. Having read an insiderÂ’s account
of the disaster, I can tell you most of what caused the meltdown
was incompetence and arrogance.

The Soviets
were entrenched in a system of promoting party loyalism rather than
technical expertise and job performance, so when the powers-that-were
decided to build a nuclear power facility, they put the wrong people
in charge and unleashed a ticking nuclear bomb within their own
borders.

Inept supervisors
made a chain of bad decisions when a fire broke out at the facility
that ultimately led to a level 7 event on the International Nuclear
Event Scale – one of two in history – that
resulted in widespread contamination of the atmosphere that spread
over the Western USSR and much of Europe.

I remember
reading a ReaderÂ’s Digest story a year or two after the event
detailing the deaths of several emergency responders who not only
voluntarily put themselves in harmÂ’s way to attempt to contain
the destruction, but did so knowing they were exposed to levels
of radiation far in excess of known-to-be fatally toxic levels.

Fukushima is
worse and the legacy media have failed to inform the world public
of the potential disaster still-looming. The earthquake destroyed
two reactor cooling facilities.

Pictures of
one of the cooling pools shows the crane used to move nuclear material
from the reactor to the pool has fallen into the water, preventing
any access to the approximately 90 tons of nuclear fuel rods kept
within just reactor No. 3.

Reactor No.
4, which no longer has any water cooling the material, contains
approximately 135 tons of fresh fuel thatÂ’s accelerating toward
catastrophic meltdown.

The total amount
of material including unused fuel and nuclear waste is upwards of
4,277 tons of nuclear material at Fukushima, or 20 times the material
in Chernobyl when it went decidedly Hindenburg.

Regardless
of the mediaÂ’s desire to generate ratings, theyÂ’ve shown
a remarkable acumen for not comprehending unintended consequences.
Their coverage of the Trayvon Martin situation and Rodney KingÂ’s
attackerÂ’s trial inflamed tenuous situations.

In the case
of Fukushima, this situation could literally destroy all life on
Earth, and yet a Google News search turns up one story by CBS on
the radioactivity in nearby towns rendering them uninhabitable for
the next decade, while literally every other source covering the
situation is new media.

Once it became
known radiation was spreading from the facility, the Japanese government
repeatedly increased the levels at which human health is at risk
as if radiation poisoning is determined by arbitrary guidelines.
Radiation has been detected over the west coast of the U.S. How
much have you heard?

Among the many
goals IÂ’ve had as a writer for the Collegian has been a desire
to expose the failures of the educational and news industries to
teach critical thinking and inform. This has been the repeated theme
of life in America, but it has been degenerative, not sudden as
some may believe.

The Fukushima
disaster proves the legacy media is becoming irrelevant, not from
intent, but from their failed execution of their intended purpose:
to inform.

Reprinted
with permission from the
Rocky
Mountain Collegian.

May
1, 2012

S.
Jacob Stern hopes everyone knows better than to trust academia or
the press to which he belongs. His column appears Mondays in the
Collegian. Letters,
job offers and feedback can be sent to letters@collegian.com.

Copyright
© 2012 Rocky
Mountain Collegian