Misleading by Omission

AP headline: “Fire Extinguished at Japanese Nuclear Power Plant”

The headline as written is completely factual. There was indeed a fire at a nuclear plant site in Oi, 235 miles West of Tokyo.

The fire, however was in a waste processing facility at the plant. (AP does identify the facility as an “incinerating facility” in the body of the story).

A glance at the headline leads a reader to believe the fire was in the power plant itself. A better headline would be: Fire extinguished at Japanese nuclear waste processing site. A Japanese news outlet phrased it: “Fire detected at radioactive waste facility at Fukui nuclear plant”.

Those who understand these things realize that there is an enormous difference between a problem in the plant’s primary side and it’s secondary side. The secondary side is, for all intents and purposes, a straight up industrial facility.

So is the AP lazy, ignorant or deliberately misleading? Hard to say.