Japan’s journalism in danger

Among Japanese people, I realize that quite many people are not aware of importance of journalism. Journalism which provides deeper news to the public is important for democracy.

As UN special rapporteur David Kaye came to Japan several years ago and published his report, journalism in Japan is facing crisis. The main roles of journalism are that providing investigative information to citizens, prevent corruption of the power including the government and major corporations and so on. Journalism against the power is basic structure and there’s always tension between them, but I think a lof of people in Japan do have less awareness of the importance. Especially even among Japanese journalists, it seems that the number of investigative journalists is not enough. What is really surprising is that some people are condemning several journalists who are doing great job at press conference as interrupting or disturbing it. If investigative journalism doesn’t work, misconducts and wrongdoings happen easily. In order to make the politics clean and not allow corruption, the role of journalism is significant and should be encouraged.

In addition, the consciousness of Journalism as watch dog is too weak in Japanese society. Some people criticize the mainstream media are on the side of the government. Especially, controversial incidents were the former chairperson of NHK said “When the government says right, they cannot say left”[1] and the remark of the former Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications implying that the government can suspend the broadcasting if TV program is politically biased. The independency of media is not protected in Japan and this is influencing negatively on Japan’s journalism.

Most importantly, journalism is beneficial to every person for a country. Each person needs to catch up with news which is not manipulated and comes from media protected independency. Like some independent media organisations in overseas countries, for example, Democracy Now! and Korean Center for Investigative Journalism – Newstapa, investigative media organisation not sponsored by major corporations but citizens might be trend for journalism. I don’t think journalism in Japan is investigative enough except some limited number of journalists. Not only journalists, but every citizen has to be paying attention to what those who having power are doing. I hope we can get our of this crisis soon.

Footnote

[1]ANNnewsCH. (2016). 物議醸したNHK籾井会長　任期満了で退任決まる(16/12/06). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsiuskfmBH4 Accessed 25 January 2018