To the point: Too much

The natural disaster also damaged the nuclear power plants in Fukushima. That the disaster, followed by a nuclear threat, would become a major media issue was clear to everyone.

But what has been going on in the media for a week now is beyond all scope. Daily special broadcasts in the electronic media, the same pictures of the raging tsunami, fleeing people, damaged reactors. Overstrained experts have to answer the same questions on all channels. Discussion groups discuss questions to which no one knows a definite answer. Many things are assumptions and conjectures.

The same images and film snippets can be found on all online portals. Constantly updated news tickers create a kind of artificial terrible topicality.

The printed press publishes several pages on the subject every day. Here, too, the same pictures, the same statements, the same horror. But here, too, the danger of overinformation, of too much.

In the Swiss Media Database (SMD), there are 2143 entries on earthquake and Japan, 2109 on nuclear power plant and Japan, and 1871 on tsunami in the last week. Mind you, these are only the articles that appeared in the Swiss media.

All this adds up to a cacophony of horror. The concentrated load of devastation, human suffering and misery turns into the opposite, it dulls and leaves no room for the actual horror.

Politicians are profiting from the moment by questioning nuclear power. Whether justified or not is not the question here. The exploitation of the Japan disaster for one's own political convictions must leave everyone - whether supporters or opponents of nuclear power - with a sour feeling. Thousands and thousands of dead, injured and missing are at stake here. God knows, political attitudes and ideologies are out of place.

And one more thing. The mad dictator in Libya continues to slaughter his population. He can do this in peace under the protection of Japan's reporting: SMD has only 750 entries on the Libyan drama.

Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
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