Tears For Japan
I cannot believe the callousness of the media reaction that I am seeing here in the Western world to the tragedies poor Japan has just endured!
When Queensland endured flooding that claimed a handful of lives we had 24 hour coverage complete with home videos, not to mention endless repeats of home videos, for days.
When New Zealand was struck by an earthquake that leveled one city we had 24 hour coverage complete with videos of what happened for days too.
We are still seeing news items about those two incidents.
Now Japan has been body slammed to the ground not once but twice with a flood and an earthquake that make the previous flood and earthquake look like mere practise runs and what is the media saying?
Oooh nuclear disaster coming, oooh is the Japanese government being honest about how safe things are? Oooh everybody out of the country!
Where are the human interest stories? Where are the home videos? Where is the video footage of waves and wildlife and falling buildings and cars being washed away taken by people on the street at the time?
Japan is the home of technology. You can’t tell me they did not film things on their mobile phone cameras. Where is that footage?
Where is the mass mobilization of world resources rushing to their aid? Where is the shock, the horror, the pity the media gave us so much of, for so many days, during our own troubles?
Why am I hearing about nothing but the state of the nuclear reactors and whether the government will be able to control them and how far away we Australians should stay from the zone and how we should get out of the country if we are there and cancel our plans to go there if we have them?
China has brought their nuclear reactor programme to a screeching halt in reaction to what has happened in Japan. I saw that while I was trying to find more information about Japan and how they were coping, and what was being done to help them, as the snow began to fall on cities that no longer had any shelter to offer! I had been hoping to see stories about how tent manufacturers were rushing tents to these poor people, or some heartwarming bit of news like that but no, it was all about the nuclear reactors.
I was disgusted.
It takes a lot to stop China in its tracks so, once my disgust passed, I was amazed to hear they had done such a thing. It got me wondering. Has China stopped construction in their nuclear reactor programme because they know their nuclear reactors would disintegrate completely if they were subjected to a major earthquake let alone a tsunami as well?
The Japanese nuclear reactors were body slammed right along with the Japanese people not once but twice. How would the nuclear reactors in every other country fare if they endured such catastrophies? Why is the media not looking at that question and answering it for us if they are so interested in the nuclear issue?
I’ve seen a little bit about the men who have volunteered to stay in those reactors to try and solve the problems but where is the media fascination and admiration the trapped miners of Chile, who did nothing but wait patiently for rescue, got from them?
Why is the media so lukewarm about these men when they are clearly heroes of the kind this world usually falls all over itself to worship? I’ve seen them make more of a fuss over some kid who called emergency services when a parent collapsed than they are making over men who have surrendered themselves to duty regardless of personal cost!
I don’t even know HOW MANY of these heroes there are! The media has probably mentioned it but I’d have to search to find it!
I think it is the Lindy Chamberlaine story all over again. Lindy was stoic in the face of her tragedy and the media hated her for it. What little footage I have seen of the Japanese peoples reaction to these catastrophies has been stoic. They don’t scream or sob or wail for the cameras so the cameras have lost interest in them.
The hearts of the world will only open if the suffering can be seen which is a shame. You cannot go through what the Japanese people have just gone through and not be shattered.
I suggest some Japanese actors create some juicy scenes of suffering and release them to the media if no genuine footage can be found.
Maybe then the world will expose the great big heart it usually shows in response to such a terrible tragedy and stop focusing on those nuclear reactors
I can tell you this much, if we ever want the Japanese people to give a damn about whales and anything else the rest of the world cares about in the future, we better make them feel we give a damn about them right now!
Edited to add…
The British, God bless them, have all the information your heart could desire about what has happened including home videos and interviews with survivors here at the BBC news website. I’m just so disgusted that I had to search online for information I should have been getting every time I turned on my television here in Australia. They were able to do it for Queensland and New Zealand so why couldn’t they do it for Japan?
