Reporting from Tokyo....plant operator 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.” For Shiraishi and others, that broadcast was a turning point, a moment many see as marking a profound shift in the trust younger Japanese place in government and media. Since that show, “Our Planet TV” viewership has shot up from about 1,000 to more than 100,000 as people have begun to seek alternative sources of information. ... younger Japanese are now consulting the Internet and other information sources, rather than depending on major media. Please read more at: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-distrust-20111218,0...
