Plausible Deniability By Omission

Nuclear Deniability via the Media

by Michael Steinberg

When I sat down for breakfast with the local newspaper on November 17 of last year, the news was not very appetizing. The lead story, reprinted from the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, told of a campaign by mothers from Port St. Lucie in St. Lucie County, Florida, to expose an alarmingly high rate of rare childhood brain cancers there. The mothers' group, "Suffer the Children," has raised an uproar in their community, forcing the Florida Department of Health to investigate. I put my spoon back in my oatmeal bowl, in an attempt to digest some of the grisly details in the report:...

...Long ago pioneer environmentalist Rachel Carson warned of nefarious health effects from the interaction of chemical and radioactive toxins. Carson, who herself died of breast cancer, termed this a synergistic phenomenon, meaning that the combined effects of different toxins in the environment could create harm to health greater than the sum of their individual effects.

The newspaper report I read last November did an excellent job of exposing the possible effects of toxic chemicals on human health, in this case on our children. But by failing to include radiation's possible effect, and not even mentioning the close proximity of the St. Lucie reactors to Port St. Lucie, it left crucial information out of the story. Perhaps the reporter was unaware of the St. Lucie reactors, or their potential role in causing an elevated rate of brain cancer in the children of St. Lucie. Unfortunately, this type of omission is still the rule rather than the exception in the national media.

When it comes to cancer and other dread diseases, the public needs to know about all the possible causal factors. The public deserves the opportunity to make informed decisions about an industry that significantly increases the risks to public health. For the media to deny to its readers or viewers key information relevant to the risk of exposure to the radiation releases of nuclear power plants seriously compromises their ability to make informed decisions. This plays into the implausible deniability of the nuclear establishment.

http://www.ibiblio.org/prism/feb98/nuclear.html

“The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.” Rachel Carson 

In Carlsbad the newspaper is doing exactly what the author of the blog is saying...

Mean while downtown Carlsburg is calm as a cucumber...
According to their newspaper anyway...http://www.currentargus.com