The old saying If It Bleeds It Leads is designed to be pejorative, yet accurate in its illustration of how pathetic some reporters and bloggers can be in search of the sensational. Oh and I know, believe you me, the speed of the digital age and the shrinking attentions spans of Americans is to blame for the skyrocketing rates of media hyperbole. You are so right– for some reason Americans no longer wait until they come home in the evening, change into a cardigan sweater, put on a pair of slippers and light up a pipe before reading their print-edition newspaper from cover to cover. Damn them. How dare they?

Lets take a cross section of the latest Fukushima reporting and see if we can spot where the hyperbole becomes just down right fiction writing. I wont list all the reporters whove embarrass themselves by alluding to the idea that consumers will be sicken by eating seafood from the Pacific, despite the fact that theyre well aware you are exposed to more radiation from a garden variety banana than from said fish. No, those I will not call out.

This one I will: On the site LiberalsUnite they examine the dangers of the Radioactive Bluefin Tuna Caught Off California Coast and find Marine biologist Nicholas Fisher at Stony Brook University in New York State, talking about Bluefin tuna; We found that absolutely every one of them had comparable concentrations of cesium 134 and cesium 137. Well, that sounds alarming. Any sentence that mentions two, count em two, different esiums must be sounding an alarm of some sortright?

Lets have a look at TakeParts write up titled, In the Aftermath of Radiation, Is Fish From the Pacific Ocean Safe to Eat? It would appear they too found Marine biologist Nicholas Fishers work and quoted him as well. Heres a sample of what they excerpted, Radioactivity in the fish that arrive in North American is detectible, but just barely. No measurements weve made are a public health concern. If we found scary-high levels [of radioactivity] we would report them to authorities, but were nowhere near that.

What? Barely detectable not a public health concern. How dare they stray from the bleeding model?

To avoid radioactive reporting like this we suggest letting the facts lead.