Comments on: Carlson: Why Do Governments Lie about Disasters?

By: dayana

dayana — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 05:56:22 +0000

I would like to look at this from a different angle. Governments have become over the years more and more dependent like all of us on an unsustainable economical pattern of creating debt, in order to avoid a complete breakdown, governments need to keep up creating revenue, which is still not an excuse for lies, though as governments are really bad sales people and even worse at customer care and any changes in consumer behaviour will without any doubt result in severe revenue loss, people are being lied to instead of being offered alternatives. Just another quick observation changing the sales rep (politician) representing the small man at the voting pole, will not change bad habits in the sales process.

By: leftbehind

leftbehind — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:09:31 +0000

Because governments lie about everything else, too.

By: knarlyknight

knarlyknight — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 17:20:04 +0000

Having worked closely in and around government, I’d agree much with shcb statement.

Unless there is an explicit culture for openness and an often repeated organizational mantra to be completely forthright, then the default, underlying mentality in government (and large corporations too) is “how are these statements going to make us look?” People get so focussed on crafting the message just right that the message becomes more real to them than the disaster itself!

Add to that some uncertainties and you’ll get communications advisors imploring people to “stick to the facts.”

Hence, instead of stating that:

there is a 75% of full meltdown at 3 of the 6 Fukishima reactor sites that could cause a circle of death within 50 km of the plant so get the hell out of the area just in case the bloody things explode before we can get them under control!

we get:

Current efforts to cool the rods are continuing with 3 of the 6 plants nearly stabilized. A risk of meltdown still exists so please follow the evacuation instructions as provided by your local emergency response crews.”

By: shcb

shcb — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:36:09 +0000

I think it usually starts with good intentions, folks in the government don’t want to panic people, for good reason. Most people die in the stampede to the front door, not the fire in the auditorium, no matter how bad the blaze. We as spectators also tend to look at these situations from the beginning to the point in the disaster we are in right now, forgetting what went on between. Now there certainly is some CYA involved in these situations, and politicians are masters at protecting the back side but that is usually only part of the equation.