April 12, 2004

By Tim Clark

Media failure pushes Japan to brink of its own 911 tragedy

Writer Noriaki Imai lost faith in traditional media and journalism years ago, but he entered Iraq driven by a belief in individual citizens' power to effect change. Now his ordeal of kidnap and possible death at the hands of the Mujahedeen Brigades is hammering home how world media failure has pushed Japan to the brink of its own face-off with terrorism-and is forcing the U.S. to confront its moral choices.

Democratic societies often call media the "fourth branch"--a private sector power that counterbalances the authority of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government, ensuring that no single branch overwhelms the others. But Mr. Imai has said Japan's fourth branch is badly withered, if not dead.

"The media is no longer the 'fourth branch'; it's simply being used by the other three branches to their own advantage," Mr. Imai wrote in an e-mail to an American writer last year. “And those powers control society.” He was only seventeen years old, a high school student working as an activist and as a freelance reporter for a liberal Internet newspaper.

Japan's toothless domestic press has been criticized for decades, both at home and abroad, for serving up as "news" the warmed-over press releases issued by government offices and ostensibly private organizations heavily beholden to the bureaucracy. Few expected domestic media to have real impact on the Japanese government's quick decision to support the U.S.-led Iraq invasion.

But during the buildup to the invasion of Iraq and initial stages of war there, many were dumbfounded by the Japan-like way the Bush administration suddenly held bureaucratic sway over U.S. broadcast media.

Maybe the shift was particularly obvious to Americans living abroad. We were baffled by how U.S. television stations cheered this violent, catastrophic blunder. Had Congress passed laws forbidding dissenting opinion in our absence? Were there new ordinances prohibiting objective fact analysis? Why weren't the Democrats fighting back? In retrospect, Michael Moore's book title captured what many of us felt: What happened to my country while I was away?

Meanwhile, the Japanese dailies ignored the burgeoning grass-roots opposition there to the planned U.S. attack on Iraq--until 70,000 people gathered in Tokyo in three different rallies in March of 2003, shortly before the invasion began. It was Japan's biggest post-Vietnam demonstration, made more significant because it was driven primarily by Internet activity--including the newspaper for which Mr. Imai wrote--rather than organized by labor unions, as the 1960s-era protests were. Traditional newspapers grudgingly reported the facts--just the facts.

Now, with a brilliant blindside tactic and stunning cruelty, insurgents have whip-focused world attention on the hypocrisy of a foreign invader autocratically imposing democracy in Iraq. They are also telling Japan that it can't support an invasion one day, and then claim exemption from the fighting on humanitarian grounds the next.

That hypocrisy was intuitively obvious to hundreds of millions of citizens around the world before the invasion, citizens who didn't share the Bush administration's privileged access to "intelligence." Morality and common sense were sufficient to see through the U.S. administration's deceit. They understood right from wrong without kidnappings or body bags to prompt their thinking. How could our media--both in the United States and Japan--be so lacking in common sense and morality at such a crucial moment?

Postscript: April 17, 2004

Now the media have a second chance. Mr. Imai escaped death, and is safely home in Japan, a temporary celebrity. Maybe now the media will offer him his due--and he will have the chance to give the media theirs.

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The following is a translation of Mr. Imai's July 25, 2003 interview with an American writer, presented verbatim.

Q: Most consumers are satisfied to read newspapers. What compelled you to start writing for one?

A: Just watch how the government operates. The police, for example, deliberately time their announcements of business and political misdealing so that much goes unreported. That's the way things are in Japan.

There are, of course, some outstanding reporters working for the newspapers, but editorial policy and parent-company business concerns severely limit both the kinds of articles they write and the depth with which they can investigate stories. The largest dailies are running businesses, not practicing journalism. Even the few independent-minded writers are squelched in such an environment.

The big dailies also offer very little international news. Neither do they cover new developments. One recent example is how the conflicts in Liberia and Aceh were given minor coverage. I doubt any of the papers covered the subsequent massacres, even at the level of reporting basic facts (though I haven't investigated this thoroughly; the Asahi didn't report on it).

Q: Was there a specific event that prompted you to start working as a citizen reporter for JanJan?

A: No. I was working as a freelance writer, and since I'm still in high school, I started a weekly e-mail newsletter in order to improve my writing and reporting skills. I happened to hear about JanJan {Japan's first general news daily Internet newspaper} and they published a piece from my newsletter that I wanted to reach a larger audience.

Q: What are Japanese journalism's strengths and weaknesses?

A: The excessive influence of the press clubs is a weakness. As the face of journalism to overseas media, the press clubs deliver an extremely poor impression. They are also a breeding ground for collusion between politicians and business. Their influence on journalism is extremely negative.

Q: Describe your personal goal as a citizen reporter.

A: Writing stories that aren't covered elsewhere. Making my generation aware how grave the future will be.

Q: How do you envision Japanese journalism and media ten years from now?

A: Journalism is collapsing today. It's hard to have hope for the future. But the power of individual citizens can revive it. If we don't change it, the future will only turn out worse.

The media is no longer the 'fourth branch', it's simply being used by the other three branches to their own advantage. And those powers control society. If I were to define journalism in one sentence, it would be as something that criticizes authority and steers society in a better direction. So in a sense, journalism has to constantly criticize itself as well.

That means we have to start questioning ourselves. As we face both the present and the future, what lies ahead will change based on what we think about what we can each do, what we can make happen.

Well, that's about it. Thank you very much for taking the time to interview me. Let me know if I can help out down the road. I would also be happy just to trade thoughts by e-mail if you like.

Noriaki Imai