Just Call It 'Hazardous Material Train'

[Susan Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

Just Call It 'Hazardous Material Train' 
By Lisa de Moraes

Tuesday, May 11, 1999; Page C07 

When an NBC spokeswoman said two weeks ago, shortly after the massacre at
a suburban Denver high school, that she was sure the head of the network's
Denver station would find, "as we did," that "Atomic Train" is
"appropriate to air," she was wrong on two counts. He didn't and the
network didn't, either.

NBC is reediting the miniseries, about a train carrying a nuclear bomb and
nuclear waste that derails and blows up in Denver. It has also yanked its
scary it-could-happen on-air promo campaign and is taking the
extraordinary step of running a disclaimer at the beginning of the
miniseries on Sunday night.

An NBC spokeswoman insists nonetheless that the actions have nothing to do
with heightened sensitivities after the Colorado shootings, or the
concerns of nearly every trade group, association and society that has
anything to do with nuclear materials, nuclear weapons or the railway
industry--some of whom were in contact with NBC executives--that the movie
is grossly inaccurate and intended to frighten the public out of its
collective wits.

"To my knowledge, no one at NBC in the decision-making process has
received any requests by outside agencies to change the miniseries," a
network spokeswoman said.

The official word out of NBC is that executives looked at the project and
saw what they hadn't seen for all the months and months that "Atomic
Train" was in development, in production or in the can--that it contained
"incorrect information."

"As a broadcaster we didn't want to go out there with incorrect
information. We embrace this as fiction and want people to take it for
what it is, but we don't want to be misleading," the spokeswoman said.

So the project is being retooled to change any reference to nuclear waste
to "hazardous material." And the disclaimer at the start of the program
will state: "The events in this miniseries are pure fiction. They are not
based on fact and we do not suggest or imply in any way that these events
could actually occur."

That would fly in the face of NBC's aggressive campaign for the
miniseries, such as the full-page ad in the current issue of People
magazine: "Where will you be when disaster strikes? Trains carry nuclear
materials through America's back yards all the time. What if one day . . .
something went wrong."

NBC did pull its similar on-air ad campaign, says the network rep.  
Trains have not transported nuclear weapons since 1985, various
associations have told the network. They are transported by truck and
always disarmed. (In the miniseries, the bomb is sneaked on board.) And
nuclear waste is never transported with nuclear arms--hence the change to
"hazardous material."

Scott Peterson, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, which
represents utilities with nuclear power plants, said members had been
calling ever since trailers for the miniseries began appearing on NBC.
Peterson said the trade association was telling members to inform
concerned callers of the "outstanding transportation record" for spent
nuclear fuel--more than 30 years and nearly 3,000 shipments without a
single release of radioactive material. And the president of the Idaho
chapter of the Health Physics Society wrote to NBC suggesting the network
state that the movie is entirely fictional and there was no intent to
imply the scenario actually could happen, the Associated Press reports.

In the miniseries, the bomb-laden train leaves from Idaho. That led a
health physicist at at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental
Laboratory to accuse NBC of timing the broadcast to coincide with nuclear
waste shipments recently sent from Idaho through Denver to the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

While executives from two of the broadcast networks were among those
attending yesterday's White House confab to stem youth violence, a new
study says that one out of five parents in America is not even aware that
content ratings are currently displayed on almost all televised
entertainment programming. Fewer than half know that content ratings are
displayed at the beginning of each sitcom. And the use of the content
ratings system by parents to screen shows for their children has actually
declined over the past year. Even so, 60 percent of parents say they are
very concerned that their children are exposed to too much violence on
television.

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Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director
Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, Inc.
136 South Illinois Avenue, Suite 208
Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830
Phone (423) 483-1333; Fax (423) 482-6572; E-mail loc@icx.net
VISIT OUR UPDATED WEB SITE:  http://www.local-oversight.org
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