[ziotom78]

It has been said that Italy is extremely vulnerable to fake news. I am not sure that we are more vulnerable than others, but it is a fact that local media provide news that is sloppy at best if not even willfully deceitful.

A couple of examples found in a book I read recently about the Fukushima incident:

- “Tokyo, a capital in agony. «We will never live here again.»”, from La Repubblica (March 20th, 2011) [1] The lead paragraph of the article reads, “Fear and nightmare of radiations: four million have already fled what was perceived as a model city”. At the time, Tokyo had 13 million people; a loss of 4 million would have meant a catastrophic collapse of the city and would have been recorded by the local media. None of this happened.

- “Fukushima, ten years after the tsunami and nuclear disaster. A return to normalcy amid abandoned lands and fears of radiation”, from Il Fatto Quotidiano (March 11th, 2021, ten years later) [2]. The lead paragraph says, “It was the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Twenty thousand people died.” The number 20,000 refers to the victims of the tsunami, but there is only one (disputed) victim caused by the nuclear accident.

[1] https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2011/03/20/news/tokyo_capit...

[2] https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2021/03/11/fukushima-dieci-...