Japan less likely to trust officials, main media, since disaster

(snip)

For many older Japanese, the government remains a trusted, paternal overseer. But younger Japanese are now consulting the Internet and other information sources, rather than depending on major media.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, announced on national TV that all was well: The utility was on top of the accident. No radiation had been released into the atmosphere. Return to regular programming.

Mainstream media dutifully reported that story. But not Shiraishi's "Our Planet TV," which soon broadcast a live interview with five Japanese reporters in Futaba City, a community near the stricken plant. The reporters, who had covered the Chernobyl disaster, told a very different tale.

"They held up Geiger counters showing the level of radiation was almost beyond calculation," said Shiraishi, a former network TV journalist who co-founded the Internet venture in 2001, hosts the show and reports many of its stories. "They'd never seen anything like it.""As soon as we broadcast anything about radiation, viewership just goes through the roof," Shiraishi said. "People tell us that they're now just learning that what the government has been telling them all along might just be a fairy tale."

[link to www.latimes.com]

More evidence of Tepco's deception.

The Tepco ball of yarn is unravelling. The young people of Japan will turn the tide....

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