Nuclear energy in the contemporary public sphere

*Public communications essay

“A nuclear power plant is infinitely safer than eating, because 300 people choke to death every year,” the Washington‘s first female governor Dixy Lee Ray once said. (Walker, 2009) No wonder the USA has built more than 100 atomic reactors by now. Nuclear energy is a hot subject discussed all around the world, sparking conflicts between conservative capitalists and green party supporters. A considerable number of controversial commentaries on this topic followed by numerous scientific researches and never-ending coverage in the contemporary public sphere encapsulates it as one of the most relevant issues which threaten our allegedly sustainable society.

An excessive amount of press coverage on nuclear energy caused complications in the process of media monitoring.  By analysing this issue from different angles I encountered one significant problem. Quite a lot of information was orientated to an array of aspects such as radioactive waste, soil pollution and nuclear warfare in particular. Our plan to collect as much information as possible turned out to be a beautiful fiasco which became a great challenge towards choosing a topic to analyse. Hinkley Point C nuclear power station received most coverage in both: national and local broadsheets flooding LexisNexis with irrelevant and most of the time repetitive information. Following the 16 billion pound investment in building new reactors in Somerset it caused great turmoil in the public sphere.  State expenditure, especially that involving £24bn, gets maximum attention from the national press. (The Guardian, 2014) In more than two months UK newspapers published 309 articles related to the Hinkley Point analysing its benefits and drawbacks to the country‘s economy as well as environment and questioning its necessity to the ecology-thirsty society.

48 countries have already harnessed nuclear energy, meaning that there is always news about it. (Nuclear Industry Association, 2012) We have tried monitoring numerous search terms, including ‘nuclear energy’, ‘atomic energy’, ‘atomic power’, ‘radioactive waste’ and ‘nuclear power plants.’ Hundreds of articles appeared on Nexis system on a weekly basis. In comparison to local as well as national England’s media, international press covered nuclear sustainability in a broader way. With practically no attention paid to the locally famous Hinkley point it observed extremely important events related to atomic energetics. An ever increasing prominence of nuclear power in the public forum was brilliantly covered by international tabloids such as ‘Daily Tribune’ and ‘The Weekly World News’. Not that it was not mentioned on ‘The Daily Mail’ or ‘The Sun’; Whilst publishing data on countries turning to nuclear energy, such as Bolivia or India, received great international attention, United Kingdom decided to stay limited to the local nuclear level.

Deeper analysis requires detailed research by using search engines other than Google. Inevitably, the latter is the most elementary browsing system that can be efficiently used by a 5 year old. It provides the general public, journalists in particular, with valuable background information on any topic needed. However, finding exactly what one needs might take some time and effort due to the excessive data. Typing ‘nuclear energy’ to the Google search field leads us to more than 35 million online sources giving us directions to, ideally, tens of articles which involve information we really need. According to the research led by The George Washington University and Cision, all journalists use Google as the main source for their online researches with more than 61 per cent of reporters blindly trusting Wikipedia. (The Guardian, 2010) Such data strongly justifies an ever increasing public questioning of social media’s reliance. Why should news consumers give credence to publishers that merely ever use primary sources and have long forgotten what fact-checking is? “Ideally you have to get up off your butt and go out and report stories. Too many people rely on sources,” claimed National Association of Black Journalists President Vanessa Williams. (Durocher, 2014: 10p.) It is time to introduce the information seekers with other means of gathering information, for instance, online library services and electronic databases of videos (B.o.B.) and journalistic documents, such as LexisNexis, Document Cloud, Web of Science or JSTOR. Most of my work on atomic energetics was done by the former programme which is a perfect tool in helping researchers gather precise data on a weekly basis.

Nuclear energy, as mentioned above, is an immensely discussed and, respectively, differently interpreted topic. By involving welfare, safety and health it is a sensitive issue that is widely covered by the contemporary mass media. People’s interpretations on atomic energetics are utterly dependent on how the media presents it to the public sphere. Murdoch and Golding (2005: p. 60) wrote that media corporations are crucial in organizing the information which shapes the general public‘s sense of the world. Journalists tend to follow the famous Galtung and Ruge’s model of newsworthiness. People want to read about issues that are immensely relevant in the nowadays society. As an example, electricity is an absolute necessity in the 21^st century. (Olds, quoted in Arulchelvan, 2013: p.4) Atomic plants provide us with such convenience, hence the general public is strongly opinionated when it comes to analysing nuclear pros and cons. Some advocate German Chancellor Angela Merkel who has announced a utopian plan to get rid of atomic energy in Germany by 2021. (Spiegel Online, 2011) The rest of the world, however, is on the same side as Barack Obama and Bill Gates, who aim to increase the number of power plants and open brand new reactors in 2022. (USA Today, 201) A variety of views towards nuclear energetics amongst the world‘s leading countries arise perplexity to the public. What should people believe in? It is crystal clear that both merits and demerits are equally strong. Nevertheless, individuals have to decide what their personal viewpoint on this issue is.  It is a challenging thing to do and the main cause of this informational chaos is media. It sparks a never ending conflict amongst the green attitude campaigners and conservative nuclear energy sympathisers.

Curran once wrote that media ‘Facilitate the formation of public opinion by providing an independent forum of debate.’ (Curran, 1991: 29) Harcup (2012: 4) claimed that journalism is the most important estate of all. Literature is nothing but another parliament of ours. However, information published by this parliament is sometimes fuelled by misleading facts which cause global misunderstanding. The discourse in the media field is either sensationalist or politically charged. (Mansell, 2013: 128) How come, though, the ‘independent forum of debate’, which is of great importance in democratic countries, is one of the main factors that halt energy development and going towards the green energetics?

‘A basic requirement of a democratic media system should be, therefore, that it represents all significant interests in society.’ (Curran, 1991: 30) However, even though journalism puts all possible endeavours into analysing both sides of atomic energy, contemporary press is usually one-sidedly orientated to either benefits or drawbacks of nuclear power plants. Publications which are orientated to the wellbeing of our civilisations consider atomic power to be one of the top 5 issues that cause depletion of natural sources. Storage of radioactive waste, nuclear hazard, and soil pollution are some of the most substantial problems that go hand in hand with an ever increasing number of new plants being built on our planet. No one has forgotten that the world is still haunted by the radioactive Chernobyl and Fukushima shadows. It takes approximately 240,000 years for radioactive plutonium to be harmless to the environment. (Greenpeace, 2014) However, nuclear energy advocates seem to overlook such facts.

Journalism cannot exist without credibility, which is fundamental to mass media. (Kohring and Matthes, 2007:231) How can news consumers possibly trust media when the light in which nuclear energy is beneficial or, by contraries, disadvantageous, is different depending on who commissions the article? Sylvia McLain, a reporter for The Guardian, compared the nuclear accidents with plane crashes in these days cultural mentality. Whilst planes are one of the safest ways to travel, plane crashes hit the news for days after happening. Despite some demerits of atomic energy, its obvious benefits should not be overlooked, she claimed. According to Sylvia, governments must start funding nuclear energy research, or else turning the lights on will be a big commodity in 10 year time. (The Guardian, 2012) It is not a secret that giant corporations which provide the world’s biggest countries with nuclear energy make huge profits. As an example, Business Insider wrote that Russia, the third largest atomic power generator in the world, allocated $2, 4 billion to new reactors in 2013. Nuclear energetics industry is a radioactive gold mine which has opened more than 44 million work places already. (Frost, 2005) ‘Telecommunications and computer networks provide the essential infrastructure that allows businesses to coordinate their activities across widely dispersed sites of activity.’ (Murdoch and Golding, 2005, p. 60) Media is a strong economic factor, which influence contemporary business. Allan Stuart (2010:23) wrote that the news media are in a way ‘purveyors of propaganda.’ People who subconsciously absorb the information commissioned by authoritative people are fooled on a daily basis without knowing what is real, and what is only a part of hypocritical populism. According to Murdoch and Golding (2005, p. 75) media has the power to make people like one over the others or, contrary, have an open choice.

Renewable energy is by far not a utopian plan. Innovative and challenging projects are categorised as newsworthy alongside bad news which have taken over the media industry. Unexpectedness is one of many news values set by Galtung and Rouge. (Brighton and Foy 2007: 8) Media offers our society that environmental renaissance is still possible by giving solutions to current nuclear issues. Solar panels, for instance, have become a trend in the energetics journalism for an ever increasing number of people have started developing and investing large sums of money in photovoltaic system. According to the recent WWF figures published in December 2014, Scotland has produced 32 per cent more solar power in comparison to 2013. (Hill, 2014) Solar energy is one of the trends which farmers in the United States harness on a daily basis. By building greenhouses with panels on their roofs it provides the agriculturalists with food that is produced for 10 out of 12 months. (Huffington Post, 2014) Nowadays press promotes the idea that it is easy to look for excuses and claim that empowering renewables takes time and big investments. Nevertheless, someone already took a stand and all the society can do is stop halting the progress. We can already buy affordable solar panels from IKEA. Journalists have the power to form people’s attitude towards certain things. Media constructs public’s beliefs and might as well begin the social change. (Happer and Philo, 2013) ‘News is the window to the world’, is it not?

Eminence of the issue strongly depends on how big the media coverage on the topic is. For instance, The Guardian has published 30 articles in November 2014 intensively analysing nuclear energetics. (The Guardian, 2014) Increase in media coverage of a certain issue correlates with a dramatic increase in public concern for the posed problem. (Sampei and Aoyagi-Usugi, 2008) Beginning of November 2014 sparked a new discussion regarding Finland’s agreement to let Russian company Rosatom build a new atomic reactor. Finland’s inadequate actions have received great condemnation knowing the Russia’s current involvement into the foreign politics. “Seen from a European perspective the manoeuvre is totally contrary to the EU’s energy security goals, which aim to cut the EU’s damaging dependency on Russian energy,” Greens Group co-president Rebecca Harms claimed to The Parliament Magazine. (2014) In comparison, press coverage related to the Finland’s misdemeanour was not that negative in the media platform orientated to the United Kingdom. To be more precise, there were not many articles analysing its disobedience overall. Whilst Eastern European journalists thought this scandal has provided them with enough of information for tens of feature articles, British newspapers were less interested in Finland’s decision. Apart from The Guardian, which managed to publish two articles on the so-called ‘joint nuclear venture with Russia.’ (The Guardian, 2014) Eastern Europe is extremely concerned about the Finland’s decision. The more coverage it gets the more public attention is given to this issue.

It is completely natural that environmental magazines publish information mostly orientated to the drawbacks of harnessing nuclear power. Science magazines, on the other hand, tend to look at the issue from another, physics related perspective, and highlight only the positive sides of atomic energy. Tabloids and newspapers follow the rules of journalism and usually remain unbiased by emphasising both pluses and minuses of generating energy in such a dangerous way. Concern about bias plays a prominent role in many policy debates, knowing the power of media, claims Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro. (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005: 2) Falling trust in the journalism sphere has prompted concerns if reporters are able to deliver credible news.  (Kohut, 2004) According to Kieran, ‘Where reporting turns away from the goal of truth and journalists treat events as open to many interpretations, according to their prejudices, assumptions, news agenda or the commercial drive toward entertainment, the justification and rationale of journalism threatens to disappear.’ (Kieran, cited in Harcup, 2009: 81) Interpretations on nuclear energy strongly depend on the media’s attitude towards it. The question is whether the world is ready to exchange partially sustainable energy to renewable power sources. Journalism is one of many industries that can help our world go towards a genuinely sustainable future.

-Auguste Chocianaite-

References

1. Allan, S. (2010). News Culture, 3rd ed. Maidenhead: Ou Publishing.
2. Arulchelvan, S. (2013). A study on public awareness & media coverage of nuclear energy issues in India.Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies [online]. 3 (1), p. 4. [Accessed 29 December 2014].

3.       Brighton P. and Foy D. (2007) News Values, Trowbridge: The Cromwell Press.
4.       Bunz, M. (2010). Most journalists use social media such as Twitter and Facebook as a source, The Guardian, [Online] Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/media/pda/2010/feb/15/journalists-social-music-twitter-facebook, [accessed 19 December 2014].

5. Curran, J. (1991). Rethinking the media as a public sphere. In: Dahlgren, P. and Sparks, C., eds. (1991) Communication and Citizenship. London: Routledge

6.       Dodge, D. (2014). The Best Green Energy Futures Stories of 2014, Huffington Post, [online] available from: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/david-dodge/green-energy-2014_b_6392632.html, [Accessed 03 January 2015].
7.       Durocher, DD. (1998). Strengthening the Bond, American Journalism Review, 20,5, p. 1, Communication and Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost, [Accessed 30 December 2014].
8.       Frost, B. (2005). The Promise of Nuclear Energy. Center for Reactor Information (CFRI) [online], available from: http://sustainablenuclear.org/PADs/pad0509frost.html. [Accessed 29 December 2014].

9. Greenpeace, (2014). No Solution to Dangerous Nuclear Waste, [online], available from: http://www.laka.org/docu/boeken/pdf/6-01-5-50-84.pdf, [Accessed 14 December 2014].

10.    Happer, C. (2013). The Role of the Media in the Construction of Public Belief and Social Change. Journal of Social and Political Psychology [online]. 1 (1), pp. 321-336. Available from: http://jspp.psychopen.eu/article/view/96/37 [Accessed 03 January 2015].
11.    Harcup, T. (2009). Journalism: Principles and Practice, 2nd ed. London: SAGE Publications Ltd..
12.    Hill, J. (2014). Scotland’s Solar Power Capacity Grew 32% In 2014, Clean Technica, [online] Available from: https://cleantechnica.com/2014/12/29/scotlands-solar-power-capacity-grew-32-2014/, [accessed on 29 December 2014].
13.    Koch, W. (2012). U.S. to fund small, modular nuclear reactors, USA Today, [online] available from: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/20/obama-doe-fund-modular-nuclear-reactors/1717843/, [Accessed 16 December 2014].

14. Kohring, M. and Matthes, J. (2007). Trust in News Media: Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Scale. Communication Research 34 (2): 231–252. doi:10.1177/0093650206298071.
15. Kohut, A. (2004). Media myopia: More news is not necessarily good news, The New York Times, [online], Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/weekinreview/the-nation-media-myopia-more-news-is-not-necessarily-good-news.html, [Accessed 27 December 2014]

16.    Levy-Abegnoli, J. (2014). Russia Moves in on Finnish Nuclear Energy Market, The Parliament Magazine, [online] Available from: https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/articles/news/russia-moves-finnish-nuclear-energy-market,  [accessed 03 January 2015].
17.    Macalister, T. (2014). EU approves Hinkley Point nuclear power station as costs raise by £8bn, The Guardian [online], Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/08/hinkley-point-european-commission-nuclear-power-station-somerset, [accessed 16 December 2014].

18. Mansell, W. (2013). Misleading the public understanding of assessment: wilful or wrongful interpretation by government and media.Oxford Review of Education[online]. 39 (1), pp. 128-138. [Accessed 14 December 2014].

19.    McLain, S. (2012). The Guardian, [Online] available from: http://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2012/nov/27/the-pros-of-nuclear-power, [Accessed 27 December 2014].

20. Murdoch, G. and Golding, P. (2005). Culture, Communications and Political Economy, In Mass Media and Society, London: Hodder.

21.    Nuclear Industry Association, (2012). Facts and Information For Nuclear Energy, [online] Available from: http://www.niauk.org/facts-and-information-for-nuclear-energy [accessed 16 December 2014].

22. Olds, F. C. (1997). Our Unique electric Society, Centre for ReactorInformation (CFRI), [online], Available from: http://www.sustainablenuclear.org/PADs/pad9607boyar.html, [accessed 29 December 2014].

23.    Sampei, Y. Aoyagi-Usugi, M. (2008). Mass-media coverage, its influence on public awareness of climate-change issues, and implications for Japan’s national campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Global Environmental Change, [online] Available from: http://128.138.136.233/students/envs_4800/sampei_2009.pdf,  [accessed 03 January 2015].
24.    Shapiro, J. and Gentzkow, M. (2005). Media Bias and Reputation, [working paper no. 11664], National Bureau of Economic Research [online] Available from: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11664.pdf, [accessed 16 December 2014].
25.    Smith, D. (2011). The World from Berlin: Nuclear Phaseout Is an ‘Historic Moment’, Spiegel Online, [online] available from: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-world-from-berlin-nuclear-phaseout-is-an-historic-moment-a-765681.html, [Accessed 29 December 2014].
26.    Tisdall, S. (2014). Finland gives go-ahead to joint nuclear venture with Russia’s Rosatom, The Guardian, [online] Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/05/finland-nuclear-project-russia-rosatom-reactor, [accessed 29 December 2014].
27.    The Guardian, (2014). Nuclear Power [online] Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/nuclearpower, [Accessed 20 December 2014].
28.    Walker, B. (2009). American Thinker, [online] available from : http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/04/thirty_years_after_three_mile.html, [Accessed 16 December 2014].