Nuclear industry wins PR award
I would like to present the Nuclear Industry Association of South Africa (NIASA) with the Monty Burns PR Award for outstanding achievement in making the nuclear industry look dishonest, stupid, manipulative, and evil. Well done, fellows.
I know they say “fight fire with fire”, but the latest move by NIASA is just plain dumb. It has brought a complaint before the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) after M-Net’s Carte Blanche screened a programme called Uranium Road
One hopes the BCCSA throws this complaint out with the contempt it deserves.
I didn’t see the programme when it was broadcast in November last year, but would not be surprised if it indeed is a biased piece of work.
A glance at the transcript shows that it raises some important issues, especially around nuclear security, environmental risk, and the economic viability of nuclear energy. It also degenerates into sensationalism, however. At one point, the effects of radioactive waste are described in all their gory detail, as if it goes without saying that this waste will not to be rigorously contained, but will be spread around the local environment to cause cancer and grow cute little mutant kittens.
Throughout, the programme it quotes David Fig, who is identified as an “independent researcher”, but in fact is the chairman of a left-wing lobby group named Biowatch South Africa. That should have been disclosed, especially since the programme refers to “the powerful lobbies that support nuclear energy” — lobbies that remain as anonymous as they sound ominous. Worse, Fig is selling a book, called… you guessed it, Uranium Road. This pecuniary interest in the subject is also never disclosed.
I don’t want to go into the actual arguments presented in the programme, or those presented by the nuclear industry, but a cursory examination of the transcript certainly makes me willing to accept that the programme may have to be taken with a pinch of salt, and that it isn’t impossible that the nuclear industry representatives featured in the story have been selectively quoted to fit the programme’s storyline. After all, if it cribbed the title of Fig’s book, it probably cribbed a lot more from his anti-nuclear, anti-corporate arguments.
But taking Carte Blanche to the BCCSA? Is the NIASA insane?
Environmentalists are supposed to be the petty fascists who invoke the authoritarian fist of government to bar free commerce, silence free speech, and sue anyone who dares offend against their fearful, conservative world-view.
This kind of braindead PR by NIASA certainly doesn’t make the nuclear industry look very honest, or sympathetic towards widely held concerns about nuclear energy, be they valid or otherwise. In fact, it reinforces the fear and distrust with which many people — and especially environmentalists and green fashionistas — view the industry. It is certainly not making it any easier for proponents of nuclear energy to make their case.
NIASA should be ashamed of itself.
Update: As I wrapped up this post, I discovered that the NIASA has withdrawn its complaint, following a “settlement”. Settlement with whom? On what terms? Why? And if it isn’t going to go through with the complaint to score a victory on factual grounds, what does the NIASA think it has achieved with this stunt? It may only have been established in June 2007, but if I were a member, I’d move to fire the executive already. So much for “powerful lobbies”.
Dear Ivo
Unlike you, I did see the Carte Blanche show which featured a programme called “Uranium Road”. What a horror of shoddy journalism and failing science grades! Thanks for putting a new perspective on why the biased programme was featured at all - when you imply that it was giving Mr Fig’s book, “Uranium Road”, free promotion and advertising.
For years, I have watched Carte Blanche with enthusiasm for quality, clear, honest and brave reporting. But their quality standards sure failed when it came to “Uranium Road”. I was going to write a letter of complaint to them at the time, but eventually I came to the conclusion that someone important in the hierarchy had an axe to grind and was powerful enough to ride rough-shod over their previous quality standards. I would simply be wasting my time. I have come to realize over the years that the media regard “the freedom of the press” and/or “freedom of expression” as reserved for themselves. In the media’s estimation, it is definitely not right for the lumpen proletariat like the Nuclear Industry Association of South Africa (in this case) to criticize the media. What a skande if that were allowed to happen - how “dishonest, stupid, manipulative and evil”.
People, Carte Blanche, Mr Fig or whoever should be allowed to say what they like without censorship - eg. by the BCCSA - whether it offends anyone or not. But, as things are in this country, what choice does the NIASA have to counter and correct the widely viewed Carte Blanche? I have not seen Carte Blanche airing any reply from the NIASA or the scientific community, which I thought was a tenet of good journalism. Mea culpa.
The problem is not just around free speech and/or shoddy reporting.
South Africa is notorious for its lack of fluency and knowledge in the sciences, engineering and maths. The low school grades make this an undeniable fact. This programme only adds to the pervasive ignorance and bigotry; it serves to amplify the quagmire this country has fallen into.
The choice the NIASA had was to use standard PR techniques to counter the arguments in Carte Blanche. There are plenty journalists who’d love to have a go at “speaking truth to power”, where the power in question is Carte Blanche. Their motivation would differ. For some, it’d be a genuine attempt to get to the truth, and be of service to their readers. For a few, it would be ego: proving they can outwit the Carte Blanche team. For many, Carte Blanche constitutes a highly successful competitor that can use being taken down a notch. For still others, Carte Blanche has stooped to sensationalism and outright nonsense a little too often.
Sure, it would constitute a fair amount of work on the part of the journalist concerned, and some journalists are lazy. It may also require overcoming some assumptions and prejudices, and some journalists are not willing to suspend their orthodox soft-left editorial bias.
I would have enjoyed the challenge of such a piece. I think I could have found a publication that would pay me for it. I’m not afraid of accusations of shilling for evil capitalists, because they’re easily dealt with.
But not after NIASA’s BCCSA threat, however. I’d be far less comfortable doing such an article now, and I’d wager so would a lot of other journalists who would otherwise have been more than capable and willing to tackle the problems in the Carte Blanche programme.
When journalists feel one of their own is under attack by someone wielding a blunt instrument (or worse, the spiked club of government), they’re more likely to circle the wagons. Which means the nuclear industry, however right, appears to be the villain of the piece, and Carte Blanche, however wrong, comes out smelling of roses.
As a PR move, this was short-sighted and counter-productive. Just ignoring Carte Blanche would have been preferable. There was a potentially useful response that would have benefited NIASA members, but I fear it has missed that opportunity.
I wrote a bit about the original Carte Blanche story 9http://commentary.co.za/archives/2007/11/04/carte-blanche-spreads-fud-about-nuclear-power/), and suffice to say it was just as bad as Andrew says. Unfortunately, Carte Blanche abandoned their journalistic ideal a fair while ago and they’ve been getting steadily worse ever since.
That said, I have to agree with you on this. NIASA’s move was nothing less than boneheaded and it just plays into the hands of the environmentalist groups by giving credence to their flawed but popular perception of a secretive and shadowy nuclear industry. This is not a weak industry, so playing the victim at BCC hearings won’t endear it to anybody.
I understand the temptation. After years of ignoring public sentiment and relying only on the fact that the government supported it, the nuclear industry is finally starting to understand that they need to convince the general public of the necessity and safety of nuclear power if they are to succeed. That’s half the reason NIASA was set up. But Carte Blanche is still so influential that the hugely-negative piece was disastrous. The natural (and wrong) response by NIASA was to force Carte Blanche to air a suitable rebuttal and try roll back some of the PR damage. Instead, they’ve just compounded it.
Fact is, the nuclear industry’s public communications suck. We’re talking about an industry that needs to dispel decades of fears and myths about their product, yet they’re putting only a half-hearted (yet heavy-handed) effort into it. Where are the media campaigns? How about a single, snappy website with summarised, easy to understand information and comparisons? The average Joe on the street knows nothing about the benefits of nuclear power; only the drawbacks.
What NIASA *should* have done is issue a well-written and publicised point-by-point rebuttal of everything in the Carte Blanche segment. Fisking is a skill even PR groups can use.
The nuclear thing is a bit like good news and bad news. Bad news is news, good news is not.
For decades, career scientists and engineers was left to defend the virtues of nuclear energy while volunteer activists was having pitched battles in the streets to see the last of the nuclear era.
Now that our ice-caps are saying good bye, our oceans are winding up ever stronger storms, our food supply is fowling up, I expect volunteer activists to emerge, take the baton from the engineers and scientists and shout for a new nuclear era, from the roof-tops.
Now say after me - nuclear is green, nuclear is green, nuclear is green…………… Go nuclear or get washed out. Go nuclear and hug a polar bear. Go nuclear or choke.
“Now that our ice-caps are saying good bye, our oceans are winding up ever stronger storms, our food supply is fowling up,”
All patently false. Nuclear energy doesn’t need to feed off of “climate change” hysteria. It’s a good sell with or without being “green”.