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Japan’s muzzled media and the nuclear crisis

Voluntary self-restraint by the media and company interests have prevented the Japanese public from knowing the full truth about Fukushima.

The recent revelation by Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, that fuel meltdown occurred in the early stages of the nuclear crisis has sparked criticism among those who have denounced the Japanese mainstream media’s sanitised coverage of the disaster.

While many have blamed the company for concealing important information and a general lack of transparency, some Japanese freelance reporters and independent media have been pointing the finger at the largest media organisations in the country.

Major television networks and newspapers are being held accountable for not questioning more closely the power company and the government, thereby failing to fulfill their role as watchdog of the public interest.

“In order not to cause panic among the people, most domestic media in the past weeks have preferred to give news that emphasised on safety issues, stressing that the levels of radiation had no effect on public health,” said Michiyoshi Hatakeyama, freelancer and press officer of the newly formed Free Press Association of Japan.

According to Hatakeyama, who authored the book A chronicle of a guerrilla correspondent, both freelance journalists and mainstream media reporters have been able to attend and ask probing questions at Tepco’s news conferences but there was a difference in the way the gathered information was used.

Commuter buys a newspaper at kiosk in Tokyo (Photo by Scilla Alecci)

Voluntary self-restraint

“Whilst from the beginning many freelancers wrote bylined articles quoting Tepco as saying ‘meltdown cannot be ruled out’ and taking responsibility for what they wrote, this is something mainstream journalists didn’t dare to do,” Hatakeyama said.

Part of the problem lies in the structure of the Japanese media information system, where staff reporters on the spot collect information and pass it on to newsrooms editors who then write the article. A byline is rarely included.

A senior staff writer at the daily Tokyo Shimbun, Osamu Tsuchida, explained that after March 11, there has been a general tendency in the mainstream media to soften the tone and limit the publication of negative news.

“Recently, reporters at the largest media organisations have become more critical but many editors and executives want to avoid spreading information that might cause anxiety to the readers or viewers,” he said.

According to Tsuchida, “voluntary self-restraint” applies in the newsrooms where “editors often refrain from publishing articles that might result inconvenient” for their advertisers.

After the nuclear crisis broke out, most of the major news organisations issued disaster reporting guidelines and set a limit of 50 km as the minimum distance from the Fukushima nuclear plant from which their staff was allowed to report.

With the mainstream media relying on Tepco’s regular briefings and news releases for information about the development of the situation at the nuclear plant, some freelancers or smaller online media organisations took it upon themselves to fill in the reporting gap and avoid a potential media blackout.

“As journalists, we have a duty to check on the authorities’ actions and assess, for instance, the adequacy of the evacuation measures,” said video-journalist Tetsuo Jimbo, CEO of the online television videonews.com, at a symposium on the media coverage of the nuclear crisis.

Jimbo was the first Japanese journalist to report from within the evacuation zone around the Fukushima nuclear plant. The 10-minute long video, which has been viewed more than 850,000 times on Youtube, shows his journey through the deserted area to within 1.5 km of the plant.

“When my video was broadcasted on some of the national television networks, the anchorman would always comment that ‘this level of radiation has no effect on people’s health’,” he said. “But I wonder how they could be so sure about it when the Geiger counter that appears in the video registered 112 microsievert/hour!”

A few weeks after the broadcast, authorities declared the area explored by Jimbo a no-go zone.

The rise of an independent media

Particularly in the weeks after the triple disaster, tech-savvy freelancers – and foreign press reporters - were able to use their position as “outsiders” to provide an independent viewpoint from both the authorities and the power company.

Immediately after the quake they were cut off from the Chief Cabinet Secretary’s news conferences where they had enjoyed regular weekly access up until then.

According to Hatakeyama, freelancer Takashi Uesugi - in his capacity as representative of the Free Press Association of Japan - started a protest to demand access to information also for non-mainstream media.

After about a week of protests independent reporters managed to obtain permission to attend the conferences and the right to broadcast them live on the Internet. They were also granted the same rights at Tepco’s media briefings.

Tepco’s news conference broadcast live on Independent Web Journal by freelancer Yasumi Iwakami

Internet-viewers were in fact first to learn that freelancer Ryusaku Tanaka was questioning the power company about the cozy relationship it maintains with the national media.

On that occasion, Tepco’s chairman admitted that, when the quake occurred, the company was hosting some executives of the largest media outlets of Japan on a study-session in China and covering more than half of the expenses of the trip.

Although the ties of the media with power companies have been known in the industry for a long time, reports came out after the disaster that Tepco – as well as other Japanese power companies –  is one of the biggest contributors to commercial television stations and newspapers with an annual advertising budget exceeding EUR 200 million.

“It’s easier for the media to criticise the government than a company because no advertising revenue is involved,” said Tokyo Shimbun reporter Tsuchida, who also explained that it is common for power companies to lobby media executives and reporters.

“There have been many cases of nuclear plant tours where reporters were wined and dined at the expense of the company,” he said. “That makes it difficult for them to write a critical article.”

A senior reporter at Shukan Asahi, a weekly affiliated with Asahi Shimbun – the second largest newspaper syndicate in Japan – said that in the past her attempts to pitch a story critical of a power company failed. “Before the accident, one of the reasons why the proposed article wouldn’t pass was because the power company is one of our biggest sponsors,” Kae Morishita said, adding that “newspaper journalists, in particular, have many more limitations than magazine reporters.”

Nonetheless, while freelancers have the freedom to investigate companies and corporate interests, their readership is very limited compared to that of the big Japanese dailies, which boast some of the highest circulation figures in the world. The same applies to television as they rarely accept freelancers’ contributions.

Police stand in front of a barricade on a road into the no-entry zone near Minami-Soma,
Fukushima Prefecture (Photo by Motoshi Aoyama)

Wake-up call

In Hatakeyama’s view, there is a long way to go for freelancers in Japan in terms of recognition and credibility. With the exception of Internet users who proactively select their news sources, “Japanese people still rely a lot on the mainstream media,” he said, adding that “those who at the beginning of the nuclear crisis said something against [the prevailing news coverage] were called scaremongers.”

Despite its small scope, however, the overall output by freelancers and independent media journalists may have eventually translated into a wake-up call for the larger media organisations who are now being challenged into changing their obsolete attitudes and do their reporting in the public interest, without any commercial “filters”.

“When the media merely reports what the authorities tell us as ‘facts’, the situation is not that different from what happened during the second world war, when the Imperial Japanese Army would spread its propaganda through the media, ” said Shigenori Kanehira, a journalist at the national television TBS, at a recent symposium in Tokyo. Kanehira has become famous for criticising the traditional media system from within.

“Modern Japanese journalism was supposed to be a repudiation of the discredited practices of the past but we are just repeating history”, he said. “It’s time for us to rethink our role.”

 

Tags: asahi shimbun, correspondent, fukushima nuclear plant, japan, journalist, mainstream media, mainstream media reporters, media briefings, media coverage, media information system, media journalists, media organisations, media outlets, media system, muzzled, online media organisations, potential media blackout, senior reporter, tokyo electric power company,

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