ABSTRACT
The Soviet nuclear power station at Chernobyl provided power for Kiev, the Soviet Union's third largest city 80 miles south of the installation, and to the surrounding farmland that has been likened to America's bread basket. The Chernobyl story, particularly as seen on US television, varied in the eyes of its creators. In the Chernobyl disaster, the end that the US government wished to achieve was to undermine world confidence in Soviet technology. Even as the Reagan administration forwarded its own political agenda through the Chernobyl story, other institutional imperatives were at work. Videotapes of the networks' news broadcasts were obtained from the Vanderbilt Television University Archives and span the first report of Chernobyl on network television on April 28, 1986, through June 1, 1986. The Soviets were portrayed as both uncaring and bumbling in the media's report of the evacuation of Chernobyl and the surrounding area.
