No News Is Bad News: Using the Media in Teaching About Japan
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NO NEWS IS BAD NEWS Using the Media in Teaching AboutJapan BY RICHARD MATTHEWS ow do people in one country learn about another Scripps-Howard, and a few more. That gives me a solid feel for land? Travel helps, but it provides limited how much news on Japan is out there, and what its nature is. exposure to the real life of a nation. Living in a What I’ve found is that, in the last few years, Japan came particular foreign country is a possibility, but few close to being an invisible country in most U.S. news media— of us have that opportunity. We learn a little and thus, I think, pretty much invisible in the consciousness of Habout the rest of the world through education, although average Americans. Of course, people know that Japan exists, not much in the typical American secondary school; outward- and are familiar with some aspects of its culture through things looking teachers like those who are reading this journal may be like sushi bars, automobiles, and consumer electronics products, the exception rather than the rule. Only those who focus on a but the news media have not prompted them to see events in particular region or country in college are likely to get much Japan as relevant to their lives in any important ways. depth of knowledge and understanding about it in a classroom. The popular level of interest in things Japanese has never Most of us, in fact, learn whatever we know about the rest been as high as many people suppose. The media spotlight fell of the world the same way we learn about our own society: heavily in 1989 to the purchase of Rockefeller Center by a through the news media. The attitudes people have about other Japanese firm, but a survey by the Times Mirror Center for the nations, and about their political and social characteristics, People and the Press (now the Pew Research Center) found that depend almost entirely on the information they read and hear only 10 percent of Americans had paid close attention to the from newspapers, television, radio and magazines. issue. The next year, the U.S. government was deciding If the media are a dominant source of information, then, whether to impose draconian trade sanctions on Japan—an could news and feature stories be a resource for teachers who issue of immense bilateral importance. When the Times Mirror want to give their students broader knowledge about the world Center specifically asked about it, just 17 percent of the people outside our borders? It might seem so, but there are two serious said they were following that story closely; by comparison, 24 problems facing the educator who would turn to newspapers, percent said they had been keenly interested in the launching of magazines and television for study materials: the coverage of the Hubble Space telescope.1 The attitudes people have about other nations, and about their political and social characteristics, depend almost entirely on the information they read and hear from newspapers, television, radio and magazines. the rest of the world in most American news media isn’t Still, public interest or not, there was no shortage of cover- necessarily accurate or broad enough to serve as reliable class- age of Japan (and the U.S.-Japan relationship) a few years ago. room information; and, in recent times, there isn’t very much At the height of its economic success, Japan was a frequent coverage of international matters anyway. presence in the pages of American newspapers and on the In what follows, I explore these assertions using, as an evening news shows. The nature of the coverage changed over example, a country that has played a dominant role in the time, from admiring to suspicious and even fearful, but there world’s economy during the past twenty years or more—Japan. was plenty of it. Then, economic reality struck in Japan, the Because I’m deeply interested in that country, I have for many “bubble” burst, and the media’s attention began to wander. years gone to extra efforts to find articles about it in major Both the breadth and depth of interest in what was going on in U.S. news media. Every day I read my newspaper, The Japan lessened noticeably. Atlanta Journal, as well as The New York Times and The Wall Perhaps the most telling moment came on the day in June Street Journal. Then I read all the wire services that feed 1994 when Murayama Tomiichi became prime minister. The into the computer on my desk—The Associated Press, the TV evening news shows and CNN all reported the develop- Washington Post-Los Angeles Times wire, Knight-Ridder, ment, but in every case near the middle of the program, nothing 28 EDUCATION ABOUT ASIA Volume 3, Number 2 Fall 1998 like a major story. All the reports were very brief, and as I recall only one was reported by a correspondent in Tokyo, rather than simply read by the anchor. The shortest, and perhaps most remarkable, report came from Peter Jennings, one of the most respected television journalists in this country. He offered only the barest information, reporting that Japan had its fourth prime minister in eight months and that Murayama Tomiichi was elected as the head of a coalition government. What is amazing is that Jennings did not even mention that Murayama was a Socialist, or what that meant in terms of Japanese politics. wo other events further changed the way Ameri- T can newspapers and TV covered Japan. The shattering Hanshin earthquake in January 1995 also shattered (fairly or unfairly) the common belief that Japan had mastered all techno- logical issues. Then in March of that year, the horrifying sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway challenged the conventional wisdom that Japan’s society was stable, secure and superior, in many ways, to most others. After that, I began to find fewer and fewer stories of sub- stance about Japan in the various papers and wire services I read. There were some, of course— when the first election was held under a new single-member district system, when various scandals were uncovered, and when one or another economic reform plan was announced— but most of the time they seemed perfunctory at best. Far more prevalent was another type of story, one that presented a wholly different image of Japan: as a small, faraway country of slightly exotic little people with quaint and peculiar customs—especially customs that put a somewhat negative light on the nation and its citizens. There were quite a number of stories, for instance, about enj¬ kousai, the fad of paid “dating” between older men and schoolgirls, and the prevalence of child pornography in the country. There were rehashes of older topics, like bullying in schools and the terrible pressures of an education system that doesn’t breed creativity. Americans could read about the new crime of stealing Nike shoes among youngsters in √saka, and of course about the national fascination with “Tamagochi,” the PHOTOS TOP TO BOTTOM: little electronic baby chick that mesmerized children and adults Mother and baby shopping in grocery in Shibuya, Tokyo. across Japan for months. Crowds of Sunday shoppers in downtown Tokyo. Articles of that sort appear from time to time regarding any Buying o bent¯o (box lunch) on the train platform in Utsunomiya. country, of course, but it seemed that they had come to dominate Photos courtesy of Richard Matthews the general coverage of Japan, at the expense of stories that treat- ed Japan as a real country with a real government and real issues. 29 According to the Vanderbilt archives, in the first twenty-seven days of April, there were a grand total of just four reports concerning Japan on the three major networks’ evening broadcasts, and they were not necessarily edifying accounts. Their topics: The Clinton-Hashimoto meeting in Washington; the growing popularity of Japanese sport utility vehicles in America; the number of Japanese businessmen who retire and become Buddhist monks; and the death of the producer of the “Godzilla” movies. n 1997 I was asked to give a talk at a conference in Atlanta Post had only a single article in the “quaint, exotic country” cat- and at several universities in Japan on the topic of media egory. The New York Times was second, with eighteen articles. I coverage of Japan. In preparation, I decided to take a clos- However, only ten reported on substantive topics purely about er, more rigorous look at the coverage to see how accurate my Japan. Three others were about U.S. interests, and five were impressions were. Using the Internet, I checked the amount and “quaint, exotic” stories, perhaps surprising for a paper thought type of coverage of Japan in major U.S. media every day for by many to be the nation’s most serious newspaper of record. the entire month of April. Since many newspapers and maga- After that, however, interest fell off pretty quickly. The zines now have online editions, I could use various methods to Philadelphia Inquirer had thirteen articles, seven of which were find out what they were saying. U.S.-centered; the Los Angeles Times had twelve, seven of First, I used a search tool that looks at the web sites of 300 which were in fact about important developments within Japan. newspapers and magazines to locate substantive articles about Other papers had far fewer. In fact, Minneapolis and Dallas did Japan. (I eliminated routine daily financial reports on things like not have a single story on Japan on their web sites during the yen exchange rates and Nikkei stock exchange levels.) Since month.