We don't report, so you can't decide

Among the things our media do poorly is establishing a reasonable sense of perspective. A few hours ago, when Japan temporarily pulled its damage control troops from the plants, AP panicked. It even quoted a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists who said Japan had virtually "thrown in the towel."

At that same point in this frantic news cycle, Reuters was reporting somewhat more calmly that the work suspension was temporary with the nearby workers preparing to resume the fight. It may or may not have been the Reuters restraint which moved the other wire service to zip the OMG report down the memory hole.

But that is a relatively small thing, and I can understand it as a matter of on-the-ground reporter/editor fatigue and the vagaries of reporting a hugely complex batch of simultaneously breaking stories under nearly impossible circumstances. The reporters slogging around in the mud and debris along with the front-line editors and rewrite drones are as much to be pitied as mocked.

The greater failures happen in the home offices -- and I'm talking about you, you high-level thinkers back in your comfy editorial digs at the headquarters of our great newspapers in New York, Washington, Los Angeles.

For instance, I have yet to see reports comparing the current danger to that of 1945-62 when we and the Russians were popping nukes in the atmosphere like a bunch of Chinese kids celebrating the new year. In that period we exploded more than 300 bombs in the open air of the Pacific, Nevada, and the South Atlantic. God knows how many Moscow set off.  (Before bomb testing officially ended in 1992, and counting underground tests, the U.S. exploded at least 1,054 nuclear "devices.")

We don't know in detail the public health consequences of those dirty blasts, mostly because the  governments decided they'd rather not.

But, Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you The World; still intact three generations after Manhattan; still spawning new and healthy human beings at a frightening rate; still a place where we strive to live out our  lives with the lights on and the thermostats responsive.

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There's some Pollyanna here, which I would regret if it were not for the need to establish a small counterweight to the prevailing mediasphere  view that, yep, the Mayans had it all figured out.