In the week immediately after March 11, 2011 — when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami hit Tohoku and crippled the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant — most Japanese were closely watching TV news programs — amazed that a nuclear crisis was now threatening their lives.
It didn't take long for people to start feeling unsure about whether they could trust what the government, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (the operator of the plant), and the scientists appearing on TV were saying — because they kept on stressing that the radiation released from the reactors did not pose an immediate threat to the public's health.
After a few weeks, it turned out that radiation contamination had actually been spreading through Fukushima and even to the Kanto region, and those who were potentially facing a risk to their health from this invisible menace lost confidence in what was being said in TV news reports.
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