Information gap between TV and the Internet

The ratio of people gaining news from only the Internet and not watching TV is increasing. Think of the media’s situation in Japan, we can see the information gap between TV and the Internet. It means that the information shared from TV and the Internet is becoming different.

Especially when the current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is in office, the world press freedom index by reporters without borders is much lower than other administrations. Even though Japan was ranked 11st in 2010[1], they were

22nd in 2011 and 2012[2].

53rd in 2013, 72nd in 2016 & 2017, and 67th in 2018[3].

Because of pressure from the government and self-censorship of media, the mainstream media, especially TV, do not play the investigative role so much.

However, when we look at the Internet, we can find huge amount of investigative, logical, and reasonable information on the regime. The internet community has been sharing much more critical information than TV.

Importantly, the logical and factual information shared by the Internet users are having larger proportion of the information the public has. It is not minority and those who using the Internet cannot bear watching what mainstream media cover when they are not getting into the investigative role. The sense of community on the Internet is increasing. In recent years, some journalists of newspapers have been working well, but weakness of journalism still remains. In order to live in a better society, journalism is one of the important aspects.

If Japan’s TV continue to behave this way, people will increasingly leave TV. The current situation that the Internet shares more useful information with the public is one of the reasons that people have been coming to prefer to use the Internet as means of getting news. The different information shared by TV and by the Internet causes the information gap between them.

[1]https://rsf.org/en/world-press-freedom-index-2010 Accessed 15 February 2019

[2]https://rsf.org/en/world-press-freedom-index-20112012 Accessed 15 February 2019

[3]https://rsf.org/en/japan Accessed 14 February 2019