Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima: An analysis of traditional and new media coverage of nuclear accidents and radiation

While there were differences in the quantity and centralization of coverage of the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima accidents, there were also some important similarities. One was that reporters covered all three accidents in real time as they unfolded over a number of days or weeks. This meant that for the first few days, the demands of breaking news required almost constant updates, leaving little time to ensure accuracy. As the accidents progressed, coverage became more accurate and detailed.

Another similarity was that, because all three accidents involved complex technical situations, many engineers and government spokespersons had a hard time avoiding technical jargon when explaining what was happening. They found it difficult to use terms journalists and laypeople could understand. Complicating this situation even further, many reporters lacked technical knowledge about nuclear plants or radiation, so they did not know what questions to ask. Some seasoned specialty reporters who were knowledgeable about nuclear energy covered the accidents, but they were in the minority.

During all three accidents, people wanted to know about radiation, how much radioactivity was escaping, and whether there were health hazards. Reporting about radiation is inherently complex because of the many terms used for different measurements and the different US and international terminology. Trying to carefully describe potential health effects also is difficult, particularly because of public fears about radiation. To overcome some of these translational problems and put radiation information into a risk context, some journalists used explanations and comparisons. This practice, however, was not the same for all three accidents; it evolved and improved over time. A comparison of coverage of the three accidents—and of radiation in particular—highlights some of the media changes that have occurred.

In a time before the Internet and cellular phones, the journalists covering the 1979 accident had to scramble for phone access, standing in lines at telephone booths or paying local residents to use telephones to report back to editors or news directors. Telephone lines were often overloaded, and calls could not get through (Report of the Public’s Right to Information Task Force, 1979).³ Between 300 and 500 journalists descended on Middletown, Pennsylvania during the first week of the accident, mostly from the United States but also from Japan and Europe.

Many reporters who initially covered the accident were those who were simply available for assignment—political reporters who covered activities in the state capital and local reporters from the region. Few had more than a rudimentary knowledge of nuclear power or knew how a reactor worked or what a meltdown was. They did not know what questions to ask about the releases of radioactivity to help the public evaluate health risks. Some science and medical writers who knew about nuclear technology and radiation came to the site while others provided assistance from their home base. Even though many reporters were on the scene, most of the nation’s media relied on somewhat centralized coverage supplied by the Associated Press and United Press International wire services; newspaper syndicates, including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Los Angeles Times-Washington Post; and the three broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC (Report of the Public’s Right to Information Task Force, 1979: 5, 171).

While the number of articles and television broadcasts never approached the huge numbers for Fukushima, the public had plenty to read and watch about the accident, according to a content analysis of coverage in five newspapers and on ABC, CBS, and NBC from March 28 to April 3, 1979. The analysis was done for the Public’s Right to Information Task Force, which investigated communication issues for the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. Each network presented about 200 minutes of accident news, spread among morning and evening news programs and specials. While the number of articles in the four major newspapers ranged from 45 to 85, one local newspaper printed 148 articles (Report of the Public’s Right to Information Task Force, 1979: 187–188).⁴

Reporting on the accident reflected the confusion among personnel from the utility, the state government, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) about what was happening in the nuclear plant during the accident and about radiation releases. It also reflected the previously mentioned language gap among the engineers, government officials, and journalists. One reporter said he left a news conference hoping that Harold Denton, then-director of the NRC’s Division of Nuclear Reactor Regulation and President Jimmy Carter’s personal representative at Three Mile Island, had not announced a meltdown in language so technical that the reporter had not understood it.

Radiation reporting at Three Mile Island was problematic, because it was almost always incomplete. Part of the blame lay with officials, who were not giving out radiation information regularly, but reporters did not know enough to ask the right questions, either. Out of 243 radiation reports reviewed in the content analysis, only 16 were complete. To be complete, according to the Task Force’s strict standard, a radiation report had to include the amount; the unit, rate, time, and duration; where the reading was taken; the nature and the type of radioactive material; and the type of exposure. While the amount and unit were almost always included in the articles, almost everything else was missing. A number of news organizations repeated sources’ comparisons to X-rays to help put radiation levels into context for readers and viewers, but the Task Force considered this comparison misleading because it failed to take into account whole-body exposure. A more appropriate comparison would have been to background radiation (Report of the Public’s Right to Information Task Force, 1979: 11, 215–217).

The Task Force concluded that the public’s right to know was not well served by the radiation reporting, and blamed both the sources, who did not provide this information, and the reporters, who “confused matters with improper comparisons, insufficient background information, and factually impossible statements.” Radiation reporting, according to the Task Force, “was abysmally inadequate” (Report of the Public’s Right to Information Task Force, 1979: 217).

Covering the Chernobyl accident was daunting, given that it occurred in a country with a controlled press. Mikhail Gorbachev, then-president of the Soviet Union, reported that while he was informed on April 26, 1986 about the accident, initial reports “were cautious in tone” (2011). It was only on April 27 that he learned about the extent of the accident and that radioactive material had been released into the atmosphere. The first extensive Soviet public report on the accident appeared on May 6—10 days after the accident began (Amerisov, 1986).

During the first week of the accident, official information was in short supply, so reporters primarily used European or US sources. Many reports speculated about high numbers of casualties, including an early United Press International report of 2,000 deaths. According to one analysis, US government sources did little to discourage speculation about a Soviet cover-up or about the numbers of injuries and deaths (Dorman and Hirsch, 1986). This analysis also noted that the US nuclear industry went to great lengths to convince citizens that this type of accident could never happen in the United States.

European governments provided most of the early radiation readings, but many were superficial. As reported in the US media, some only stated that radiation levels were safe but did not explain what safe meant. Others noted that levels had dropped two or three times from what they had been earlier but did not reveal current or past levels. A few provided complete readings (Friedman et al., 1987).

A content analysis of the first two weeks of the accident coverage in five US newspapers and on the three major television networks found that 46 percent of the 394 articles and 60 percent of the 43 newscasts included some radiation information.⁵ However, information about radiation levels was infrequent and unspecific. The most common explanation was to say that the levels were high, moderate, or low without a numerical reading. The next most common way was to use the same high-moderate-low approach and combine it with a comparative radiation level. There were only 52 numerical radiation readings in the articles and four in the newscasts, and they included about half of the information the Task Force said should be present (Friedman et al., 1987: 63, 77).

The most frequently used comparison was to background or normal radiation levels, an important improvement over the wide use of chest X-ray comparisons at Three Mile Island. Television newscasts, however, still used chest X-rays almost a quarter of the time. Only a limited effort was made to explain radiation information, and few illustrations, graphics, or glossaries of radiation terms appeared in the newspapers. Television coverage included graphics in almost all of the newscasts but these were mostly maps showing the spread of a radioactive cloud and a simplistic illustration of a nuclear reactor burning or in the process of a meltdown. More than 80 percent of the articles and 93 percent of the newscasts included general risk estimates for American citizens; most said there was little or no risk.

The content analysis showed that the Chernobyl radiation coverage was better than that at Three Mile Island for a number of measures. Still, there was not enough coverage of the actual radiation levels or enough explanatory information to help readers and viewers better understand their risks. Opinions about the radiation coverage were mixed among experts. David Rubin, who headed the Three Mile Island Public’s Right to Information Task Force, said that it was “just as much a mess as ever.” Conversely, a nuclear engineering professor who was a member of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island said, “Chernobyl stories were more factual and less pejorative” (Friedman, 1991: 80). The Atomic Industrial Forum (the predecessor of today’s Nuclear Energy Institute) said that both the US print and electronic media, with few exceptions, provided fair reporting of Chernobyl with few excesses (Friedman et al., 1992: 307).

Fukushima provided a major test of whether Internet resources could be used to provide better nuclear disaster coverage. Many media organizations in the United States—including The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and National Public Radio, among others—rose to the challenge, using creative approaches to reporting and giving more space and airtime for long-form articles and in-depth reporting, along with complementary infographics and multimedia projects.⁶ These and other media outlets not only included information on accident events but also had links to and updates from other web and social media resources. Readers’ comments were posted online, giving feedback to journalists and enabling dialogues that included opinions, answers to questions, and suggestions for other websites to view.

The New York Times is an excellent example of a news organization that mastered effective nuclear-accident storytelling, particularly complex and nuanced radiation reporting. Its website pushed the traditional radiation narrative into a creative and visual nonlinear structure. Complex interactive and animated diagrams helped explain changing evacuation zones, possible paths of the plume of radioactivity, the hazards of storing spent fuel, the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, the dangers of radiation for workers, and radioactive water problems at the power station. Radiation information included not only interactive diagrams but also a table that discussed levels of radioactivity in air, soil, water, and food at the plant, near the plant, in Japan, and around the world. Another graph of radiation levels gave measurements at the Fukushima Daiichi main office, the station’s gates, and the plant perimeter from March 12 through April 18—comparing them with cumulative typical radiation doses for a whole-body CT scan, annual US doses for all sources and for natural sources, and a chest X-ray. This effort provided almost all the information the Three Mile Island Task Force had said was needed for accurate reporting on radiation levels. These graphics and others helped readers visualize complex topics, providing a level of explanation not seen in either the Three Mile Island or the Chernobyl coverage.

Conventional reporting, as well, was at its best in The New York Times. A search of its website for the term “Fukushima” from March 11 to June 26, 2011 found 440 articles; 258 were found using the search terms “Fukushima” and “radiation.” Although the large number of articles and ongoing coverage precludes a systematic content analysis, a June 26, 2011 search of The New York Times archives for articles with the most radiation content showed that the first 10 articles retrieved focused on parental concerns for children’s exposure to radiation, worker exposures, and the radiation levels at and around the Fukushima plant. Articles about breaking news, such as the June 6 announcement that radioactive emissions were more than double those reported earlier in the accident, were often accompanied by explanatory articles by energy, science, and health reporters. They produced articles that put the radiation news into perspective, exploring the continuing scientific dispute over the effects of long-term exposure to low doses of radiation (Wald, 2011), as well as the degrees of danger from radiation (Broad, 2011a) and how radioactive elements travel in the atmosphere, are deposited, and work their way into certain foods (Broad, 2011b). In addition, there were several background articles about health effects, two of which included information about measuring radioactive elements and their effects on human cells (Grady, 2011a, 2011b). Other informative articles on radiation covered the potential spread of radioactivity in Japan and other countries, changing evacuation zones and hot spots, contamination of food products, concerns about sea and marine life pollution, and people’s fears of nuclear fallout, among others.

Many people watched the Fukushima events unfold on television or watched videos of newscasts on the Web or YouTube. A number of Fukushima stories appeared on US national newscasts during the first days of the accident, frequently overshadowing coverage of the earthquake and tsunami damage, deaths, and recovery efforts. According to the Tyndall Report, there were 29 nightly newscasts from ABC, CBS, and NBC that included coverage of the nuclear accident (2011). The networks reported on the accident every night until March 18. Then Fukushima coverage faded as other news topics took precedence, such as the violence in Libya. The three national networks covered the nuclear accident again on March 28, when leaks of highly radioactive water appeared, but after that, as of June 28, the nightly newscast on NBC had covered Fukushima events seven times, compared with three for CBS and one for ABC. All of the networks employed graphics, video, and experts to help them explain radiation issues at Fukushima, but often these reports were quick snapshots due to the brevity required on newscasts.

CNN, operating on a much longer news cycle than the network news shows, had much more time to provide explanations and graphics, but instead endlessly repeated video of the same scenes on a series of its shows during its early coverage. Filling so much airtime tended to highlight when the anchors, reporters, or commentators were not well prepared. Tim Goodman, chief television critic for The Hollywood Reporter (2011), noted that both Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta seemed at a loss for what to do while reporting from Japan. He also criticized irrelevant interviews, such as when Piers Morgan interviewed Yoko Ono about how she felt seeing the Japanese “carnage.”

Some CNN commentators also were either unprepared or full of hyperbole. For example, Bill Nye the Science Guy gave an incorrect answer to a question about cesium-137 (Grossman, 2011).⁷ Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist and frequent commentator, often used bombastic terms, such as calling Fukushima “a ticking time bomb” (2011). Despite these shortcomings, Goodman concluded that CNN covered the nuclear accident better than the other cable networks.

However, he roundly criticized US television coverage, saying that “the words ‘meltdown,’ ‘catastrophe,’ and ‘radiation’ were tossed about in such a way that it seemed news agencies were willing it all to happen” to increase ratings (Goodman, 2011: F-1). He urged that reporters and anchors be much better prepared and that incessantly simplistic questions and runaway speculation stop. He recommended watching videos from NHK WORLD English, the BBC, and Al Jazeera English as the best options for Americans who wanted good Fukushima information.

Errors and hype also plagued some of the coverage in the print and online media. The Japanese Foreign Ministry blasted the foreign media for “excessive” reporting and asked them to be more objective (Matsumura, 2011). The New York Times reporter Matthew Wald criticized some of the television and online coverage as sometimes overly simplified or incorrect, in part because some of the reporters involved were in “over their heads” in terms of the technical side of the nuclear disaster (Leahy, 2011). Others, particularly scientists and those with technical knowledge, criticized both the traditional and the social-media coverage, saying scare tactics once again rode the media waves and increased the public’s nuclear phobia.