It seems that the Japanese government is seeking to use journalists to support a propaganda campaign.  Meanwhile, Japanese residents nearby who are without any protective gear, and who are also not that far from the nuclear power plant are being left to get radiation sickeness.

Oh, are there photos from a recent Fukushima media junket orchestrated by TEPCO and the Japanese Government. (The NYT ran 14 pics, The Daily Mail used 18, CBS ran 31.) Getty photographer David Guttenfelder, the only American of the fifty journalist on the trip, filed this report of the shoot for the MSNBC Photoblog. For my money, though, this is the only photo that really tells the story.

In spite (or maybe even because) of the troubling disclosure a week-and-a-half ago that the plant is experiencing bursts of fission after three of the reactors melted down (news of which, Japan stonewalled), TEPCO has scored a major PR coup blanketing visual media with images consisting primarily of workers going through layers and layers of safety procedures. Given Tepco and Japan’s persistent efforts to spin and contain this story, it’s hard for me to look past the metaphor here of journalists, bottled up to fend off the microsieverts, being taken for a ride.

Internet site reference: http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2011/11/fukushimas-radiant-media-junket/