Germany’s Public Media Flat Out Lies…Claims Fukushima Accident Took “Thousands Of Lives”

It’s little wonder that the German public is beginning an uprising against the mandatory fees that every citizen is forced to pay in order to fund the country’s vast public radio and television. Every year the widely hated GEZ shakes €8 billion from Germans. For German readers, here’s a stinging commentary on just how unbelievably arrogant the German public media has become.

But not only are listeners and viewers fed up with the burgeoning arrogance of the public media, but also by their outright deceit and political propaganda, which they feel is necessary to properly up bring citizens.

One reader provides us yet another example of this. Deutsche Welle (German Broadcasting) here provides its readers with the latest “news” on Fukushima. The elitists in the German public media feel it is one of their solemn duties to tell audiences that nuclear energy is evil, kills thousands, and that we are all supposed to hate it.

From the report we see Japan is waking up to the fact that providing power without nuclear plants is not an easy thing after all, and so the country is contemplating a U-turn and returning to nuclear power, less than 2 years after the Fukushima disaster.

Ministerpräsident Shinzo Abe, who took office just a few days ago, says Japan simply cannot afford to stop using nuclear power.

The DW report, whose source is the German Press Agency (DPA) among others, pretty much provides background information on the Abe’s decision. But it’s the last sentence in the DW report that raises eyebrows:

Through the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Northeastern Japan was seriously damaged. There were meltdowns in three reactor blocks; thousands of people died. It was the worst nuclear catastrophe since the Chernobyl accident in 1986.”

Thousands of people died? Really?

Sadly, editors could not be bothered to check if that spectacular number could be right. One place to start a simple fact-check would be Wikipedia, which is known for political correctness. It turns out that the “thousands of people died” claim is totally bogus – deceit fabricated and now being spread by various European media outlets.

Wikipedia writes that of what few deaths did occur, 2 deaths were caused by “sustained multiple external injuries and were believed to have died from blood loss”, and a Japanese research company found that “other deaths were due to the disruption of hospital operations, exacerbation of pre-existing health problems and the stress of dramatic changes in life” and that “the vast majority of people who died during evacuation were elderly. 45 patients were reported dead after the evacuation of a hospital in Futaba due to lack of food, water and medical care as evacuation was delayed by three days.”

Wikipedia then goes on to write about some people being over-exposed to radiation, but nowhere does the report mention “thousands of people died”. In fact, the Wikipedia report writes (my emphasis):

As of September 2012, there were no deaths or serious injuries due to direct radiation exposures.”

It appears that any radiation deaths show up only in models:

According to a June 2012 Stanford University study by John Ten Hoeve and Mark Jacobson, the radiation released could cause 130 deaths from cancer (the lower bound for the estimater being 15 and the upper bound 1100) and 180 cancer cases (the lower bound being 24 and the upper bound 1800), mostly in Japan.”

Quite surprisngly, Wikipedia then writes that nuclear power actually saves and extends lives – commenting on the numbers of people who died or may die from radiation exposure (emphasis added):

These numbers are very low compared to the estimated 20,000 casualties caused by the tsunami itself, and it has been estimated that if Japan had never adopted nuclear power, accidents and pollution from coal or gas plants would have caused more lost years of life.”

So the next time you pick up or hear any report coming from Germany’s elitist, forced publicly-funded media, don’t believe a damn word of it.

13 responses to “Germany’s Public Media Flat Out Lies…Claims Fukushima Accident Took “Thousands Of Lives””

  1. Josh

    Avoidance of nuclear power is a pointless excercise. The Japanese are a pragmatic people and wont move away from it, they can’t anyhow. The true cost of the so called energy transformation will be the loss of productivity, since the flux density of ‘renewables’ is far lower than that of nuclear power.

  2. Asmilwho

    There’s a quite (unintentionally) hilarious speech by Jürgen Trittin in “Die Welt” from Monday, you can quite literally see him foaming at the mouth about nuclear power:

    http://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/politik/article112314995/Wir-haben-den-Zug-auf-die-Reise-geschickt.html

    On the saner side of the debate EU-Kommissar Gunther Oettinger made some interesting comments about the continuation of nuclear power recently:

    http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/eu-energiekommissar-oettinger-in-40-jahren-noch-atomstrom-im-deutschen-netz-haben_aid_889614.html

  3. Ric Werme

    That’s pretty incredible. The only excuse I can think of is that they were referring to the deaths from the tsunami, forgetting that these really should be treated as two events. Of course, if that’s the case, that’s also inexcusable reporting.

    1. DirkH

      They are quite cunning distorters. You can bet they know the facts and will formulate their sentences around it. Der Spiegel does it all the time.

  4. Josh

    @Ric
    Absolutely. The anti-human/anti-development lobby have conveniently forgotten the true disaster of 2011 namely the deaths and disruption to lives brought about by the tsunami. This has been encouraged, whether intentional or not, by an irresponsible media, here in Oz and in Germany.

  5. Bernd Flesche

    Is there a way that I can phrase a message to DW which could not be perceived as excessively rude? Just a few of the words and phrases I would like to include: “so schlecht dass es noch nicht mal falsch ist”, “irreführend”, “Glaubwürdigkeit verschollen”, “Panikmache”, “Fehlverstand”, “Untauglichkeit”, “Japaner dulden keine Inkompetenz”

    A view from Japan:
    http://www.apa.co.jp/book_ronbun/vol4/2011einglish.html

    1. Bernd Felsche

      One day… my fingers won’t transpose letters on my name.

  6. Bernd Felsche

    Looks like Hamburgers are toast:
    http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/news-cache/in-hamburg-gibt-es-jetzt-klimaschulen/

    Climate Schools introduced in Hamburg. Especially disturbing are the reactions in comments, especially #19: Michael Dietz’s on the gullibility of the teaching profession as well as the running of schools; and #24: Michael Dietz’s comments on the notion of professional “development” of teachers.

  7. Hamish McDougal

    They also ignore the deadly toll in the actual mining of coal. In my country (Britain), from 1700 to 2000 there were 164,356 deaths. That’s in 3 centuries: over 3 every 2 days. It was much worse in the first half of the last century – 1900 to 1950: 84,331 or more than 9 every two days

  8. R. de Haan

    Start calling the news desks of Eins, ZDF, N24 etc. and ask for Mr. Goebels from the Global Warming Propaganda Department. Maybe after they receive 1000+ calls they wake up to the reality.

  9. Bernd Felsche

    Henryk Broder has a few words to say about the ARD “top” management:
    http://www.welt.de/debatte/henryk-m-broder/article112308351/Deutschland-ein-Kaefig-voller-Narren.html

    There are huge amounts of public money being collected to fund the propaganda machine. And those pulling the levers and turning the cogs don’t seem to give a damn about the collective insanity which they are promoting.

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