The Volcano Scare Strikes Again, But It’s All In The Media

News regarding a possible volcanic eruption in Iceland have been causing quite a commotion in these hours around the world. But people abroad should be made aware that most of this volcano scare is a fabrication of the media. Apparently, in spite of the experts’ assurance that as matter of fact there shouldn’t be particular reasons to be alarmed right now, the British media in special way issued menacing reports suggesting an eruption was almost a certainty, not only a possibility. If you want the truth, Icelandic media didn’t give much importance to the whole matter. The swarm of earthquakes recently recorded in the north-west area of the glacier of Vatnajökull, corresponding to the volcano of Bárdarbunga, shouldn’t be regarded as out of the ordinary and shouldn’t cause a threat to the population inside or outside Iceland, the experts of the Icelandic Meteorological Office repeated again and again. Without much success, one must admit, if it’s true people everywhere thought Bárdarbunga was in fact posing an actual danger even before an eruption actually started.

Professor Páll Einarsson from the University of Iceland in particular expressed his astonishment at the manner foreign media like the Daily Telegraph distorted some of his original statements, released in the occasion of an interview for the Icelandic TV, turning them into panic-inducing predictions. The distorted statements were then repeated by several other media around the globe and the news were slightly altered every time, with a catastrophic result. If we were to sum up what happened, we could think about a lost in translation episode of epic proportions.

Although eruptions in Iceland are always probable due to the nature of the country, not any geological event, more or less relevant, is an unequivocal sign that a colossal eruption is in the making. Most eruptions taking place in the country are smaller scale occurrences that are nothing like what happened last year at Eyjafjallajökull.