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Civic Engagement Projects
Doing Public Journalism in Japan: The Practices of Asahi Shimbun
By Yohtaro Hamada, Staff writer, Asahi Shimbun, The Section for Civic Welfare
Jul 29, 2002, 12:43am
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Asahi Shimbun, one of the largest national newspapers in Japan (8 million circulation of morning edition, 4 million of evening edition), established the Section for Civic Welfare ( Kurashi ) in April,2000. The team of 37 mid-career reporters and editors is determined to break away from old practices and has embraced the ideas of ‘public journalism’ in its daily reporting, probably for the first time in the history of news media in Japan. This essay explains the brief history of how public journalism has laid its root in Asahi Shimbun.
1. Introduction to Japan
In 1994, the idea of public journalism first grabbed the attention of one Japanese journalist. Shin-ichi Yoshida, a Washington correspondent for Asahi at the time, had been writing a series of stories analyzing the relationships between politics and the news media. One of the stories he wrote was titled ‘ Connecting to Citizens’ ( August 4th, 1994 ) , which discussed Charlotte Observer’s reporting on the 1992 presidential election. In writing this article, Yoshida interviewed editors of the Observer, the researcher in the Poynter Media Institute, and Professor Jay Rosen of New York University. This is how ‘ public journalism’ made its debut in the Japanese newspaper for the first time.
When Yoshida returned to Japan to take a position as a political news editor, he had launched a project which aimed to put the idea of public journalism in practice. In 1995, he organized a team of 13 reporters and started the project ‘Focusing on Shizuoka’. Shizuoka is one of the 47 prefectures in Japan, and widely considered as “ average” in the many aspects such as income of the residents, sort of like Peoria in the U.S. The idea was to focus on the voters in this area and find out what the citizens really think of politics, first by conducting opinion polls on 2000 citizens. Then, the Yoshida’s team asked 1000 of them to cooperate in answering 6 more polls consecutively. In addition to that, the reporters conducted the face-to-face interviews with 350 of them. This extensive research exposed the changes in the way the growing number of non-partisan swinging voters think and act, their discontents and expectations of politics.
This project reporting won the Japan Newspaper Society Award, equivalent of Pulitzer Prize, in 1995. In the application statement, Yoshida clearly stated ‘ the design of this project has its root in public journalism, which is becoming a significant stream in American media.’ He explained that political reporting in Japan traditionally had focused on conveying and analyzing the messages from the politicians to the voters. But as Japan’s political system faces the fundamental change involving voters, the media should assume the responsibility to establish interactive relationships between politicians and voters. Yoshida thought that the concept of public journalism is effective in order to pursue this task and went on to describe the situation in the U.S which seems parallel to that of Japan.
‘ There has been a criticism of media in the U.S. that political reporting relies too heavily on perspectives of ‘Washington insiders’, which increases among citizens the level of distrust toward politics and detachment from it. In their efforts to answer this criticism, public journalists have been trying to observe and report politics and government from where ordinary citizens stand,’ Yoshida wrote.
2. Top editor embraced a similar concept
In 1999, Akihiko Miura, then the head of editorial department, wrote an essay titled ‘ the role of newspaper in the era of restructuring’ which appeared in the monthly magazine circulated only in the newsroom. Miura argued that in the last decade of 20th.century, Japan has lost its confidence as an economic power. Economic growth, the nationally agreed goal of post-war Japan, is no longer valid. So what is that people find valuable in our society? According to Miura, that is security and safety. In the attempt to measure how secure and safe the society will be, people asks questions such as these. How high will the rate of sales tax be in order to finance the huge national debt? How long will the interest rate remain virtually zero? Will we be able to receive social security check as the government advertises? How big will a copayment and deductible of health insurance be? Will the air and water be clean and safe to breathe and drink? Those are the concerns people want to be answered and addressed, Miura argued.
However, reporters have not done this job to the satisfaction of readers. For example, reporters have written loads of stories describing the problems of social security system: how distorted the system has become because of political turmoil. But one thing they fail to do is to show the readers how the system could be improved to give the citiznes more sense of security and safety. How could it be done? One thing we must do, Miura argues, is to observe the issues from the perspectives of ordinary citizens, not politicians and bureaucrats, and edit the paper accordingly. It is vitally important for the reporters to realize that they are citizens just like all the other people who struggle to live their everyday lives.
3. Formation of ‘the Section for Civic Welfare’
Miura’s philosophy has taken shape in the Spring of 1999 as a team called ‘Kurashi No Ashita’(‘Life Tomorrow’, if literally translated ). The team of about 15 reporters and editors had been assigned to focus its attention on social security issues. The launch has been timed for the introduction of 401K type pension scheme and the start of the national nursing care insurance. After 10 months of this endeavor, Miura appointed Yoshida, then the senior political writer, to head the team which was to double the number of personnel in order to assume the new, expanded responsibility.
From the outset, Yoshida openly announced that the team would embrace the ideas of public journalism. It shows in the English translation of the team’s name,‘ the Section for Civic Welfare’. Along with covering the daily activities of major institutions such as the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labor, the Social Security Agency, and the Ministry of Environment, the team is responsible to produce 4 pages of special 'KURASHI (LIFE)' section a week. The reporters are organized into 3 teams. Each team is assigned to produce one or two pages a week. 'Environment and Safety' team has a page on Monday. The 'Job and Pension Plan' team’s page on Tuesday, 'Health care and Nursing care for Elderly' on Wednesday. An each team has its own e-mail address to solicit comments from the readers. The e-mail addresses are printed on an each page, along with a fax number and (snail) mailing address.
The team’s resolution to listen to the voices of citizens is itself revolutionary in Japan. Traditionally, the Japanese media has been focusing on the activities of the governments. If there is something new about government, that’s the news. The development of this peculiar news judgment could be attributed to the fact that the government in Japan, especially central bureaucracies, had played key roles in bringing about modernization in 19th century and ‘economic miracles’ during 60s and 70s. Some scholars even dubbed Japan as ‘the most successful socialist country in the world’. Though the extent to which the bureaucrats contributed to the economic success of the nation is debatable, majority of Japanese people nevertheless have developed tendencies to look at the government for sources of all mighty power. This in turn has resulted in lack of the idea of self-government. If there is any problem, the responsibility to come up with a solution rests solely on the shoulders of bureaucrats.
The media reflect this dominant sentiment. It never occurs to reporters that citizens should also be held accountable for solving the problems in a democracy In the society where the government monopolizes the public sphere and people are considered to have any role in neither agenda settings nor addressing them, reporters just listen to bureaucrats and key policy makers, and report what they do and where they make mistakes. There is little space for citizens’ involvement. If the KURASHI team were to reform the Japanese media, it would first need to break away from this convention of only seeking the news in the officialdom.
4.. Listening to our readers
KURASHI has started out its version of public journalism by establishing the connection between the newsroom and readers. 37 members would agree that our conscious efforts to get connected with our readers have opened up a whole new frontier of issues that we have not previously noticed. “We hit the treasure island”, some members said.
On average, we receive a couple hundreds to around one thousand comments per month, and roughly half of them come via the net. Some people send comments in by using their mobile phone with an e-mail function, probably while they are on commuter trains. Those who use e-mail are relatively young, but we were happy to find that some elder folks, over 70 years old, utilize the net. One thing we can say for sure is that e-mail has made people feel easier to send comments in.
The stories that attract the largest number of comments from the readers are those of medical treatment. Especially, when or team featured how some doctors ill-treat patient, more than 2000 comments burst in like a flood. We had never suspected that huge amount of dissatisfaction toward the medical professionals exists among people. It seemed like we had popped an over-inflated balloon and all the complaints and vexation stored inside had come out and find their way to our newsroom. The team had kept interviewing those people who sent in comments and run a story under the title ' distrust of doctor' again and again. Then, doctors and nurses sent in their responses. The team continuously recycles this theme, because it takes time and efforts to create meaningful conversation between doctor and patient.
Along with running the feature story of the day, ‘KURASHI’ section devotes approximately one third of its space to the column called ‘ Want to Say, Want to Hear’. This box-shaped space welcomes questions (about complex system of social security, for example) from the readers, and reporter seeks experts’ opinion or official answers to them. Quite often, the reporter needs to dig deeper into the topic and ends up writing major investigative stories that induce more readers’ responses. Other times, the space is used to facilitate discussions among readers about the topics such as discrimination against female workers in job markets, treatment of chronic illness. We try to facilitate discussion in a way that wide variety of perspective is represented. . Over all, this column characterizes our section as a kind of ‘public forum’ where people can gather and freely discuss their concerns about society. Naturally, it serves as an antenna to catch what really goes on in people’s mind.
The other successful project is on reporting job-hunting experiences of soon-to-be graduating college students. In Japan, college students usually start contacting prospective employers when they are half way through their junior year. They attend seminars and interview sessions until a position after graduation is confirmed by one of the companies. The season, which last about half a year, is very stressful and often dramatic, because college kids are, for the first time, forced to deal with outside 'professional' world and expected to behave like responsible adults.
One reporter in the ' Job and Pension' team has organized around 50 college students who are going through season of job-hunting. She solicits these students to tell their experiences when dealing with companies. Japanese big, prestigious companies, such as Sony and Toyota, are very popular among students, but also very selective as to whom they recruit, because of the long recession. One of the big banks run a recruiting seminar during which a moderator said that it was warm inside the room and the attendants could take off their suits and jackets. 10 seconds later, the moderator declared that those who took off jackets should leave the seminar room (meaning they were no longer considered as applicants). This kind of funny but outrageous episodes is sent in via e-mail from the focus group students. The reporter runs a popular weekly column that introduced these experiences and regularly writes about labor market from the perspective of job seekers. Her column gives the students who generally are not avid newspaper readers a good reason to turn to our page.
What we have learned from actively seeking to listen to the people is that the vast range of story ideas is there to be cultivated. They had never been noticed because reporters, when trying to write stories, had preconceived framework (too often borrowed from bureaucrats and scholars) and only seek 'ordinary people's voice' to fit into that framework. On the other hand, the members of the team try to show our attitude to listen to what our readers want to say. We want to make them believe that ' your voices count'.
I myself have personally experienced being connected with citizens can be quite rewarding. When I wrote a series of stories that some people have their social security payment dramatically reduced because of the mismanagement of social security record, more than 200 people all over the country responded and told me that they had same kind of experiences. Among those people, I found that some regional government offices redressed this defect of the system by bending the rules. I was able to write an exclusive story on those unequal treatments. The Ministry of Health and Welfare responded to this campaign and promised to address this problem. This campaign would never have been possible without consistent support from our readers who keep feeding me new information and cases which substantiate my argument that the mismanagement by the government agency is indeed the root cause of this whole confusion.
During the campaign, I had tried to make it clear to the readers that if their voices, opinions and complaints are well founded, our newspaper can connect them to the government by serving as a kind of conduit between the people and the government.
5. My Research Focus in the U.S
I am a founding member of KURASHI team. In the autumn of 1998, when I was in the economic news department, I happened to encounter the book ‘ Doing Public Journalism’ by Arthur Charity and was immediately attracted to the idea. The book articulated much of the frustration I felt toward existing practices of news making. It was probably the sense of relief I felt when the book told me that many reporters share the frustration. Ever since, I have been reading a book after book pertinent to public journalism. Thanks to ‘Amazon.com’ that makes it possible to search and purchase books published outside of my country.
Though the editor Yoshida has written several essays explaining the idea of public journalism and why it is useful, it is still not very familiar concept for Japanese, partly because there are few literatures about public journalism in Japanese language.
Then, I have acquired grant from the Fulbright program. Below is basically what I wrote in the application to the grant program, explaining what I would research as a visiting scholar to the United States.
Along with many advanced nations, Japan is facing a formidable challenge: how to finance the cost of rapidly aging population. Instead of preparing ourselves for this task, we have been procrastinating the efforts we should have started to make long time ago. Even worse, we are continuously worsening our position. We have now\645 trillion ($5.9 trillion) of general governmental debt and the present value of welfare pension liability worth\530 trillion ($ 4.8 million) that cannot be funded by the present level of premiums. With this level of debts and liabilities, people sense that heavier burden is inevitable, but only vaguely. Nevertheless, it generates the feeling of insecurity, which has led to the slump in economy in general and consumption in particular. Bearing a heavier burden will require carefully building a consensus among the members of our society as to who should pay more and who should receive less. This painful process is something that post-war Japanese society has rarely experienced. Until the burst of ‘bubble economy’, distribution of newly created wealth had been the only issue. Everybody could enjoy real income growth. However, from now on, we have to face heavier burden while income in real terms goes down. If not handled well, the social discontent might rise to the destructive level. Signs are already showing.
My hypothesis is that the democracy in Japan is not working well enough to take on the task described above. It even fails to inform people the magnitude of the problem. A recent national election is a case in point. Not a single party had made the prospect of our financial burden a campaign issue. Combined with irresponsibility of politicians, we are increasingly disconnecting ourselves from public systems that constitute our society. Take a public pension system, for example. In the national pension plan which self-employed people participate, around one third of people who should be covered by this scheme do not pay their premiums (social security tax). In the scheme of welfare pension that employed people participate, an increasing number of small and medium companies evade employer’s contribution.
I am convinced that we need a different kind of journalism when we try to build up a consensus around the shares of burden. Rather than being content with a watchdog role, we should help citizens to deliberate the problems and perform their responsibilities as citizens as fully as possible. To be more specific, we should not only point out what’s going wrong, but also help citizens to deliberate on what choices are available to solve the problems. We should present relevant information so that we can help them to decide by spelling out the cost and benefit of an each choice. It is not an easy task, because understanding social security systems require imagination beyond our own generations; intergenerational equity must be taken into our consideration. We also need to encourage people to participate in public discussions. The groups with conflicting interests (workers and retirees, for example) need to seek common grounds on which workable solution can be made. I understand that these are the core ideas of public (civic) journalism that has been practiced in the United States since early 1990. If this kind of journalism can make people feel that they can make a difference by participating, we may start re-connecting ourselves to public systems.
Just before coming to the U.S, I headed the project called ‘ young generation reports’. We asked 10 high school students to research on what social security system would look like when they become their 40s, This is when aging of the Japanese society would reach its peak. We invited those students to Tokyo and arranged interview sessions with high-ranking officials in Ministry of Finance, and Ministry of Health and Welfare. What those young reporters gathered sure looked grim from all the available projections of the future society.
The message this series meant to convey was that the adults should act more responsibly and start preparing ourselves for the coming aging society. By running the stories reported from the viewpoint of young generation who would bear the heaviest burden, we hoped to make this important topic of aging society more compelling and spur the inter generational discussion among the citizens. (Details of this project are discussed in the separate essay titled Youth Civic Engagement: in the case of Asahi Shimbun)
Yohtaro Hamada can be contacted through e-mail:hamaday@mercury.ne.jp
© Copyright 2001 by YourSITE.com
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