Reed Irvine - Editor
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The February 1968 Tet offensive of the Vietcong was portrayed by the American news media as a stunning defeat for our side even though the enemy did not achieve his objectives and was virtually wiped out in the process. Later, when Robert Northshield, an executive producer for NBC, was asked why he had rejected a suggestion that NBC do a program to correct the record, he said that the public had perceived Tet as a defeat and therefore it was a defeat. Our people never really got the word that we had won that fight because people like Northshield didn't want to tell them.
The March 28 accident at the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania has been getting the "Tet" treatment from much of the news media. For a week the headlines screamed catastrophe. On April 4, a Senate subcommittee chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy summoned a number of the top officials in Washington to find out whether or not a catastrophe had occurred in terms of the effect of the accident on health and environment. The answer was a resounding NO.
We already knew that not a single person had been killed or injured in this "worst nuclear power plant accident in our history." The great good news that came out of the Kennedy hearing was that there would not be a single additional death from cancer among the two million people living with 50 miles of the plant as a result of radiation leakage caused by the accident. That was the testimony of Joseph Califano, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. Califano said that the maximum cumulative radiation dose received by anyone living within 5 miles of the stricken power plant during the first five days after the accident was about 80 millirems, the equivalent of two chest x-rays. Califano said that even if all 25,800 people living in the 5 mile radius had received this maximum dose, this would not produce a single additional cancer fatality.
The figures on exposure used by Secretary Califano were based on preliminary NRC data which are subject to possible revision. However, even if the level of the maximum possible exposure was doubled, it would not alter the estimate that there would be no increased fatalities from cancer. It should be noted that the maximum safe radiation dose for the general public is now set at 500 millirems per year. The maxi- mum for radiation workers is 5000 railitems per year. These are conservative levels in comparison with doses at which people become noticeably ill. At a close of 100,000 millirems some people experience nausea and fatigue, and at 250,000 millirems there would be a few fatalities.
Cancer deaths are another matter. Secretary Califano based his estimate of no cancer deaths on the assumption that one fatal cancer could be expected if 25,000 people were exposed to 400 millirems of radiation. The exposures experienced by the 25,000 living within 5 miles of Three Mile Island didn't come close to that.
In addition to this reassuring news that no cancer deaths would result, Surgeon-General Julius Richmond told the subcommittee that there was no significant health risk to the public in the vicinity of the power plant. Douglas Costie, head of the Environmental Protection Agency and Dr. Donald Kennedy, head of the Food and Drug Administration concurred in this judgment. Dr. Kennedy said that his agency's monitoring showed no increased health risk to the public from the drinking water or the food.
Although Secretary Califano in an off the cuff reply to a question stated that the radiation would linger for "months, years," this was corrected by experts who pointed out that the radiation had been almost entirely from two gases, xenon and krypton. These disperse rapidly in the atmosphere and lose their radioactivity in a matter of days or weeks. Radioactivity in the area had generally returned to normal background levels in less than a week after the accident. The plant is equipped with filters which blocked the escape of solids which have longer radioactive lives. Insignificant trace elements of iodine were found in milk in the area, a fact that some of the media exploited to add to the fears of the public. The amount of iodine ranged from 11 to 46 picocuries per liter, which compares with the permitted level of up to 12,000 picocuries. (A picocurie is a trillionth of a curie, a measure of radiation).
In opening his hearing, Senator Kennedy said that his purpose was to bring out the facts and address the fears of the people about the health impact of the accident at Three Mile Island. He said: "When we are done, Americans will know what the health experts know."
However, apart from the small number of people who attended the hearing or the larger number who may have listened to it on National Public Radio, it appears that very many Americans never heard or read much of the good news that came out at the hearing. The news media gave it little prominence. Two of the three TV network evening news shows did not even report Califano's statement that there would be no cancer deaths caused by the radiation leakage.
On the evening of April 4, the day of the hearing, ABC led off its reporting on the accident with a discussion of the radioactive contamination of the plant itself. Following this. anchorman Max Robinson said: "It's impossible to know what, if any damage, has been done to the health of the people here." He was referring to the residents of the area. not the workers in the plant. This was followed by a discussion of possible psychological damage. Finally. correspondent Catherine Mackin was brought on to tell about Senator Kennedy's hearing.
Miss Mackin said not a word about the good news that Califano estimated that there would not be a single additional cancer death, nor did she give any of the other specific statements the experts had made about the safety of the area. Here is what she said: "Political, health and science officials came together to reassure the people about the nuclear accident. But even as they said out of one side of their mouths that the danger was minimal, out of the other side of their mouths they said there is no safe level of radiation and that it will be a generation before anyone knows the real health impact of the accident, if then." Miss Mackin showed Secretary Califano giving that inaccurate, off-the-cuff reply that the radiation would continue for "months, years," but she did not show the experts pointing out that the leaked gases had short radioactive lives.
The previous evening, ABC News had shown great concern about that trace of iodine in the milk. After showing government officials denying that it was any cause for alarm, they interviewed a man named Hardison, who kept a few sheep and goats. He said that he did not believe his goat milk was safe to drink. even though the government inspectors assured him that it was all right. The same day the Associated Press identified Mrs. Hardison as a member of a local anti-nuclear protest group, a detail that ABC News neglected to mention. When the Surgeon-General and the heads of the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency all testified that there was no health risk and that the food and water in the area were perfectly safe, ABC News ignored them.
Miss Mackin concluded her highly selective report on what had transpired with this observation: "Many believe nuclear energy's luck has run out." ABC's commentator, Howard K. Smith, was one who might have profited from knowing what the witnesses at the hearing had said about the zero cancer risk. In his commentary he noted that radiation could leave you healthy for years and then fell you with cancer. He noted that there were dangers in mining coal and in storing water behind dams, but he said: "I, who have supported more nuclear power, confess I am now with those who fear we shall have to seek our fuel from sources whose disasters are known . . ." Mr. Smith was seemingly unaware of what had been revealed that day about the outcome of the Three Mile Island accident.
CBS News. like ABC. started off its program on April 4 talking about the problem of cleaning up the (:rippled plant. Rather than report what the officials had said about the levels of radiation that people in the vicinity were exposed to, CBS chose to show a student in a school asking the teacher, "How many rems of radiation did we receive through the air?" tone rein is 1000 millirem]. The teacher did not know and the viewers of CBS News were left wondering what the answer might be.
Toward the end of this segment of the program, Walter Cronkite got around to that Kennedy subcommittee hearing. To CBS the top news out of the hearing was the criticism some senators directed at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for not having gotten more of its experts to the site of the accident faster. Finally, CBS showed the Surgeon-General and the head of the FDA stating that there was no health risk. Nothing was said about the fact that the Secretary of HEW had testified or that he had stated that there would not be a single cancer death as a result of the accident.
NBC News put at the top of the news a report on the causes of the accident. They next turned to Kennedy's hearings, and the report went like this:
Tom Pettit: Today, a Senate inquiry into Three Mile Island concentrated on health. The findings:
Costle of the Environmental Protection Agency: dumping radioactive water into the Susquehanna has not contaminated drinking water downstream. Kennedy of Food and Drug: no added risk for food and drink, including milk. Califano of HEW: workers who were inside the plant should take potassium iodide to help prevent cancer of the thyroid. Low level radiation outside the plant? Well:
HEW Secretary Califano: We would expect to find no additional cancer deaths in this population as a result of radiation exposure to date.
Tom Pettit: The room was crowded. The entire federal medical establishment said people in the Harrisburg area have nothing to worry about. They also said they do not know for sure the effect of low level radiation.
NBC was the only one of the three networks to sum up what the health experts said, but in doing so it seemed to try to cast doubt on their credibility. Pettit linked the Costle statement that the water was safe with the alleged dumping of radioactive water in the river. What he didn't mention was that the water that was dumped into the river was the ordinary lavatory waste water from the plant which is normally discharged into the river. It was checked before being discharged and found to be within the permitted limits for radioactivity.
To be sure, no one claimed at the hearing that all the answers on the effects of low level radiation are known. However, the basis for projecting no deaths from cancer as a result of the accident was explained. The methodology assumes that if a given radiation exposure is known to cause 100 cancer deaths, 10 percent of that exposure will cause 10 deaths. Many scientists believe that this overstates the number of cancer deaths caused by low level radiation, since it does not allow for the recuperative powers of the body to overcome minor damage. Others disagree, but it would be hard to argue that 80 millirems of radiation is a disaster. That is less than the difference in normal background radiation per year between Denver and Dallas.
A Decent Burial in the Press Senator Kennedy did not get much help from the press in carrying out his promise that the American people would know what the health experts know. The Washington Post was the only paper we saw that featured the story prominently on page one. The Post put it at the top of the page under the headline: "HEW Sees No Health Risk, Will Monitor the Area." The New York Times also put Califano's statement about no cancer deaths on page one, but it was found in the seventh paragraph of a story headed: "Panel Cites Errors that led to Mishap in nuclear Reactor." That was the only statement of the health experts that The Times reported, but buried deep in another story on page B14, The Times mentioned that an NRC health specialist had reported that the maximum possible radiation dose anyone in the area could have received over five days was about 85 millirems.
The Wall Street Journal on April 5 carried a long story about the accident on page 2, and the reader who persisted to the 29th paragraph in the continuation on page 28 would have found that Secretary Califano "claimed" that people living near the reactor faced no added risk of cancer. The Journal's reporters, Walter Mossberg and Richard Hudson, added this statement: "Mr. Califano's statement . . . comes in the face of mounting evidence that even very low levels of radiation can cause cancer." Rather than note that Califano had said that the radiation dose received by those living within five miles of the plant would have been only 80 millirems at the most, Mossberg and Hudson said that Califano had said that these people would probably not experience increased cancer "despite receiving as much as 100 times more radiation that the average received by the larger group (those living within a radius of 50 miles). True, they had given the figure for the larger group--0.9 millirems--and the careful reader could do the multiplication, or even figure that 100 times 0.9 wasn't much. But a lot of readers aren't too careful by the time they get to the 32nd paragraph of a news story.
The Washington Star put its story on the hearing at the bottom of page A-6. It was written in a somewhat argumentative tone. We found stories that at least summarized the main points made by the health experts in the Baltimore sun (page 8), the Atlanta Constitution (page 17). and the News World (page 14). The Christian Science Monitor and the New York Post did not carry a single word about the testimony.
As in the case of the Tet offensive, this treatment was in sharp contrast to the banner headlines that had screamed catastrophe in many papers throughout the country, the New York Post, which completely ignored the good news, had particularly distinguished itself by its sensationalism in exploiting the accident. On March 29, its front page headline, filling more than a fourth of the page, screamed: "NUKE CLOUD SPREADING." The following day an even larger headline announced: "NUKE LEAK AT INDIAN POINT." The story said that about ten gallons of low level radioactive waste water had spilled on the ground at the Indian Point nuclear power plant north of New York City while it was being pumped into a tanker. A later report in The New York Times put the amount spilled at about three pints. The amount of radioactivity involved was so small that it did not register on the dosimeters of two workmen who were present.
This same issue of the N.Y. Post also carried a story about a goat belonging to a woman near the Three Mile Island nuclear plant which had allegedly become very sick after the accident. The owner was certain that the nuclear accident was to blame. A few days later the Associated Press sent out a picture of this woman and her sick goat. She was identified as Louise Hardison, a member of a local anti-nuclear protest group. She was presumably the wife of Mr. Hardison who starred on ABC's evening news program, proclaiming that his goat milk was not safe to drink. Like ABC. The Post said nothing about the involvement of the Hardisons in the anti-nuclear movement.
On Saturday, March 31, The N.Y. Post went all out. It had nothing on its front page but headlines, the largest of which read: "RACE WITH NUCLEAR DISASTER." The subheads were: "Baffled scientists struggle to ward off A-plant meltdown; .... Harrisburg on edge of a nightmare; .... Residents Flee towns near site;" and "Radioactivity watch set in upstate N.Y."
This tabloid was milking the accident for every $0.25 sale it could get.
The Post was not the only one. The headlines and leads in the morning papers on March 31 reveal some interesting contrasts. Here are a few examples:
"1,200 FLEE AS U.S. WARNS OF ATOMIC FUEL MELTDOWN" Chicago Tribune
"U.S. AIDES SEE A RISK OF MELTDOWN AT PENN- SYLVANIA NUCLEAR PLANT" New York Times
"'MELT' CALLED REMOTE; MANY EVACUATE AREA" Washington Star
"'MELT-DOWN' HORROR POSSIBLE" Dallas Morning News
"PLANT STABLE; NO EVACUATION, MELTDOWN POSSIBILITY 'REMOTE'" Miami Herald
"A-PLANT MELTDOWN FEARED" Milwaukee Sentinel
"CHANCES OF MELT-DOWN TERMED 'VERY REMOTE'" Columbia (S.C.} Record
Here are some of the lead paragraphs that supported these headlines:
Chicago Tribune: "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission warned Friday that there is a risk of a uranium fuel meltdown in the crippled Three Mile Island nuclear power plant here in the next few days." by Casey Bukro. Environment editor
New York Times: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Congress today that the risk of a reactor core meltdown had arisen at the crippled Three Mile Island atomic power plant at Middletown, Pa., an event that could necessitate the evacuation of the immediate area." by David Burnham
Dallas Morning News: "Federal officials said Friday a 'melt-down'--the worst possible nuclear power plant catastrophe--could occur at the Three Mile Island plant in a few days if engineers cannot cool the crippled reactor." by UPI
Columbia Record: "Scientists struggled to cool down the stricken Three Mile Island nuclear power plant today, but authorities said the chances of a catastrophic meltdown were 'very remote' and assured 130,000 nearby residents they were safe." by AP
The headlines about a possible meltdown came from a statement by NRC official Dudley Thompson, which the UPI reported as follows: "There is a danger of a reactor meltdown within a few days at Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Dudley Thompson of the NRC Office of Inspection and Enforcement said that the threat ranges from the real possibility of partial melting of the uranium fuel to the minuscule chance that the entire reactor core could melt, the worst type of nuclear catastrophe." About 45 minutes later the UPI sent out an "insert" to this story. It said Thompson had called a second press conference to caution about the use of the word "meltdown." which connoted a complete melting of the reactor core. He said that while there was a possibility of some limited, localized melting of fuel, the worst he anticipated was some increase in radioactivity in the reactor container. This would pose no hazard offsite.
This effort to set the record straight and avoid panic headlines was unsuccessful as far as many papers were concerned.
Very little has been said about it in the press, but a lot of people have voiced the suspicion that sabotage was involved in the Three Mile Island accident. This has been nurtured by the discovery that important valves that should have been open were left closed and proper steps were not taken to activate a backup valve when a vital safety valve failed to close. The suspicions have been helped along by the fact that the accident occurred soon after Jane Fonda's anti-nuclear power movie, "China Syndrome," was released.
Experts ,lose to the situation that we have talked to have mixed views on this question. One thought that it was all too complicated for sabotage. Another thought that perhaps the errors were just too stupid to have been entirely accidental. The only way that can be resolved is by taking a close look at those who made the errors and seeking to find out why they acted as they did.
It is a sign of our times that reasonable people can harbor suspicions that there are those among us who would go so far as to try to cause a serious accident to halt the use of nuclear power. There is no evidence that anyone did that in the Three Mile Island case. But there is ample evidence that once the accident occurred the opponents of nuclear power exploited it to the hilt to achieve their objective. They received a lot of help from the news media.
If anyone wanted to see a catastrophe involving thou- sands of deaths. injuries, latent cancers and radioactive contamination of wide areas, they did not achieve their objective the remarkable safety record of the nuclear power industry--no deaths as a result of a commercial reactor accident--remains intact. But thanks to the media coverage, which President Carter himself called "exaggerated," "irresponsible" and "outrageous," according to Evans and Novak. they may be winning a victory--Tet style. As in the case of Tet. this was possible only because the threat to our safety was sensationalized and the final results were played down or ignored.
1. If you believe that the testimony of Sec. Califano and the other health experts was not adequately reported in the papers you read, write letters to the editors, using the information in this AIM Report. 2. Among the TV networks, ABC News was the worst. Write to Leonard H. Goldenson. Chairman. ABC, 1330 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y: 10019, and protest their distorted reporting.
NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF By Reed Irvine
SUPPLEMENT AIM Report April B 1979
AS WE GO TO PRESS, THE STORY OF THE NUCLEAR ACCIDENT AT THREE MILE ISLAND IS still very much in the news. It is possible that by the time this AIM Report reaches you, the media will have done a better job of informing the public that the accident left no tragic legacy of cancer or radioactive contamination of the environment. The Washington Star today (April 10) carried a banner headline reading, "FOOD, WATER NEAR N-PLANT FREE OF RADIATION." The sub-head reported that the governor of Pennsylvania had said the area was safe for all. That contrasted with the Star's burial of the good news from the Kennedy subcommittee hearings five days earlier at the bottom of page 6. I hope that other papers will similarly try to undo some of the damage that has been done by those scare headlines and stories.
HOWEVER, I NOTED THAT EVEN THROUGH TODAY,FEAR WAS STILL BEING PEDDLED ON TV. Tonight's ABC News discussion of the accident and its aftermath had anchorman Max Robinson saying that life was returning to normal in the small communities near the nuclear plant "or at least as normal as it will ever be for the people who have lived through the most serious nuclear accident in this country's history." Correspondent Bettina Gregory pursued this theme, saying, "Life has ostensibly returned to normal." She observed that some who had returned had said "it has been sheer hell since the accident." She interviewed one woman who said that she had been scared to death and that she was not ashamed to admit that she had left and that she was "afraid to be here."
CBS NEWS PLAYED THIS THEME ON ITS NEWS THIS MORNING, INTERVIEWING A COUPLE WHO feared that the value of their home had been shot and who expressed doubts that it would be safe to even plant a garden.
OF COURSE SUCH PEOPLE COULD BE FOUND, BUTSO COULD OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. FOR example, there is Bud King, proprietor of the Kings Arms, a tavern in Goldsboro, Pa., the town nearest to Three Mile Island. The N.Y. Times of April 6 quoted King as saying, "That nuclear plant never caused me any trouble. The only ones who left were fools and damn fools." The Times said King swore when he got on to the role the press had played in the whole affair. He was quoted as saying: "First they run an 'Extra, Extra' saying there is a nuclear nightmare. Then they run an 'Extra, Extra, Extra,' saying everything they printed was all lies. I'll tell you what they should have done. Until this was settled, they should have cut off the electricity from the printing presses and the television stations. Then people wouldn't have panicked the way they did." Mr. King did not star on CBS or ABC.
I THOUGHT THAT ONE OF THE NASTIEST BITS OF SCARE JOURNALISM TO COME OUT OF THIS incident was a broadcast about Hershey, Pa. and the Hershey Food Corp. on National Public Radio on April 3. NPR's late afternoon news program, "All Things Considered," aired a segment on the impact of the nuclear accident on Hershey, which is 11 miles away from the accident site. They began by saying that Hershey's brochures say that fresh whole milk is vital to the business of the big candy manufacturing company. Noting the proximity to the accident site, NPR's Bob Edwards said: "If the milk in this region should be contaminated, Hershey chocolate could become something of an historic relic, a victim of the nuclear age."
THIS WAS ON THE VERY DAY THAT GOVERNOR THORNBURGH ANNOUNCED THAT TESTS SHOWED that the milk in the area was perfectly safe. Traces of radioactive iodine had shown up in a few samples, but the amount was 0.0038 percent of the permissible level, at the most. The readings were 11 to 46 picocuries per liter. The permitted level is up to 12,000 picocuries. A few years ago when the region was getting fallout from a Chinese nuclear bomb test, the readings were as high as 300 picocuries, and there was no suggestion that Hershey chocolate might become "an historic relic" then.
NPR did not get around to mentioning what the Governor had said until late in the segment. First, correspondent Nina Totenberg interviewed a union business agent who revealed that Hershev was not bringing milk into the plant. We found that Ms. Totenberg had discussed this matter with an official of the company who had explained that they were having the milk processed as powder because they did not want to get stuck with a big inventory of fresh milk if an evacuation was ordered. Ms. Totenberg did not mention that.
Adding to the implication that the company was afraid of the milk, she said: "The candy made with old milk is thought to be okay, and the company wants it out of here." A little later she said: "Now put yourself in my position as a consumer... who doesn't live here. True, nobody is getting sick, but we keep hearing from the so-called experts that nobody knows the effects of any of this stuff 20 years down the road. And it doesn't really matter if they tell you it's one in a thousand persons more will get cancer, if you're the one, and I would think that there would be an awful lot of people with that kind of reasoning. Well, when you come to Hershey Park...who would say to themselves, 'I might as well buy a Nestles bar. Why buy a Hershey bar? Five years from now we'll see what happens."
ONLY AFTER HAVING DEFTLY KNIFED HERSHEY WITH THIS INNUENDO, DID NPR'S NINA Totenburg report what the Governor had said about the safety of the milk, quoting him as saying: "I can say there is no present danger to consumers from milk produced in this area." Since the Governor's statement undermined her story, Ms. Totenberg tried a little undermining of her own, saying: "'No present danger. That s a far cry from the warm greeting on the Hershey Park brochure."
I WANT TO THANK AN ALERT AND INDIGNANT AIM MEMBER IN JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA WHO called me long distance to complain about this atrocious broadcast on April 3. We had the transcript in hand the following morning, and I had a three page letter criticizing the broadcast hand-carried to Frank Mankiewicz, the President of National Public Radio, on April 5. I concluded this letter saying, "Will you have appropriate corrective action taken to allay the needless concern caused by this broadcast and to reprimand those responsible for it?" Mr. Mankiewicz has not yet replied. If any of you care to let him know how you feel about this dirty journalism, the address is National Public Radio, 2025 M Street, N. W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
DESPITE ALL THAT HAS BEEN SAID AND PRINTED ABOUT THE ACCIDENT, THERE ARE Indications that this nuclear Tet offensive may not succeed. In the first test of voter feelings since the accident, Austin, Texas voted on April 7 to continue its participation in a joint nuclear power project with several other cities. A Washington Post poll of 934 people in the Washington, D. C. area found that 38% favored nuclear power, 28% were opposed, and 34% were neutral or uncertain. This poll was taken from the 3rd to the 6th of April. The percentage favoring nuclear power had not been changed by the accident, but the percentage opposed had risen from 18% to 28%. A CBS-New York Times survey found that 36% of those polled were under the misapprehension that a nuclear power plant could explode like a bomb. These misinformed people were found to be the strongest opponents of nuclear power. IF THERE IS SOMEONE YOU KNOW WHO SHOULD BE SET STRAIGHT ON THIS, GET THEM A COPY OF THE HEALTH HAZARDS OF NOT GOING NUCLEAR. Send AIM a piece of paper with your name and address, the book title, and $4.75 to get this book.