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October 2003
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NSK Announces 2003 Editorial Division Awards
The Nihon Shinbun Kyokai (NSK) on Sept. 3 named three winners for this year's NSK Editorial Division Awards. The awards will be presented at the 56th National Newspaper Convention on Oct. 15 in Kumamoto City.
One of the three, Tomoko Oji, a City News Division reporter at the Mainichi Shimbun's Tokyo Head Office, will be getting the award for a second straight year, after winning it earlier for her scoop on the Defense Agency's listing of the names of people who had sought information under the Disclosure of Information Law.
The NSK Awards were created in 1957 to promote activities to enhance the authority and the credibility of the newspaper industry (also including wire services and broadcasting). NSK awards its prizes to people who make remarkable contributions in the editorial, business/management, and technology divisions of member companies.
Here is the background on the winners of this year's NSK Editorial Division Awards:
-- For her scoop on the Defense Agency's latest collection of personal information, this time from local governments' basic resident registers, to recruit new members for the Self-Defense Forces
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(Tomoko Oji, City News Division, Mainichi Shimbun Tokyo Head Office)
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The Mainichi Shimbun's Tokyo Head Office carried her scoop as the top article on the front page of its morning issue of April 23, 2003. The article revealed that the Defense Agency has been calling on local governments to provide lists of qualified people who turn 18 in age, extracted from the basic resident register, as part of its activities to recruit new members for the Self-Defense Forces. Many local governments had cooperated with the agency by providing personal information on residents, without any legal basis for doing so, for 37 years.
The article, written on the basis of the writer's tenacious investigative activities, brought to light the fact that the Defense Agency and more than 500 local governments had misused personal information without due consideration. It drew public attention to the danger of personal information being misused by administrative organizations and to the problems inherent in the proposed Personal Information Protection Law. Her scoop led to the inclusion of a provision on the appropriateness of personal information collection being added to the resolution adopted by the Diet with the much-disputed Personal Information Protection Law. Her article won high acclaim for the social repercussions it produced.
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-- For their series of articles on the much-disputed legislation to allow life insurers to cut guaranteed yields to policyholders
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(Tadanori Yoshida, the Chugoku Region General Headquarters, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, formerly with the Economic News Division, the Editorial Department)
(Kazuaki Fujii, the Economic News Division, the Editorial Department, Nihon Keizai Shimbun)
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Nihon Keizai Shimbun carried several scoop reports on the controversial government decision to change the Insurance Business Law to allow life insurers to cut guaranteed yields to policyholders in order to avoid bankruptcies. In its July 25, 2002, morning issue, the Nikkei Shimbun reported, ahead of other newspapers, that the director general of the Financial Services Agency was considering lowering the guaranteed yields on policies. In its Nov. 25, 2002, issue, Nikkei reported that the Financial Services Agency had decided to let life insurers cut yields through a bill to revise the Insurance Business Law. In its Jan. 19, 2003, issue the Nikkei said the agency's draft law would cut the yields to around 3 percent.
By closely and tenaciously following the agency's moves, the Nikkei continued to report, ahead of other newspapers, this major shift in government policy on financial affairs, thereby drawing interest to an issue that is central to life planning for the public. The series of scoops represent news reporting with true foresight.
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-- For the long-term series reexamining the history of Hansen's disease (Leprosy) in Japan
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(Task force headed by Shinji Maruno, a deputy chief of the News Division and editorial writer, Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun)
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In the wake of the Kumamoto District Court's historic May 2001 ruling that found unconstitutional the state's segregation of Hansen's disease patients, the Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun launched a series of articles on the history of Hansen's disease and the violation of patients' basic human rights by the segregation policy. The series ran from Dec. 24, 2001 to June 29, 2003.
Soul-searching on a lack of media coverage of the issue and the plight of the patients led the task force to collect accounts by many former patients and other parties concerned for incorporation in the series.
The newspaper's presentation of the lessons of the sad history of the segregation policy and putting them to good use for the future served the greater interest of the general public and deserves the high acclaim that it has received.
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Members Open Baghdad Bureaus, Offices
Kyodo News officially opened a bureau in Baghdad, on Aug. 16, building from a temporary office it established in April.
Despite the declared the end of the war in Iraq, the attacks on U.S.-British occupation forces continue. Japan's other major media have continued reporting from their respective offices or through correspondents rotating through hotels in Baghdad.
Kyodo decided to open a Baghdad office as its 41st overseas bureau in the expectation that Iraq will remain a key focus of its international news reporting as Japan prepares to deploy Self-Defense Force troops in the country. Kyodo now has a bureau chief and two workers at the bureau.
The Chunichi Shimbun's Tokyo Head Office officially opened an office in Baghdad on July 1, although it is not yet an official bureau. A locally hired correspondent is reporting on developments. From time to time, two correspondents from Cairo, Egypt, will be sent to Baghdad, and correspondents in branch offices in Europe will join them as needed, depending on events in Iraq. NHK keeps at least three reporters at its representative office in a Baghdad hotel, while the Asahi Shimbun, the Mainichi Shimbun and the Yomiuri Shimbun are all maintaining a news-reporting setup in Baghdad by bringing in reporters from bureaus in other parts of the world.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the Sankei Shimbun and Jiji Press do not have reporters in Baghdad, but have correspondents from their bureaus in Cairo and Bahrain visit the area from time to time. Depending on developments in Iraq, the three companies are set to send reporters there on long-term assignments, but will not open a bureau.
Due to worsening security and the delay in deploying SDF troops, no major commercial TV broadcasting station has yet assigned reporters to Baghdad.
Asahi, Mainichi and Yomiuri Test Voice-news Service for Mobile Phone Users
The Asahi, Mainichi and Yomiuri have teamed up with Olympus Corp. to test sending voice versions of their newspaper articles to mobile phone users. The service, dubbed "M-Studio," is the first voice-news in a newspaper industry. The companies aim to launch a commercial service next spring.
M-Studio uses Olympus voice-synthesis technology that allows content distribution in voice and text.
The testing involves giving out mobile phones loaded with an application for voice conversion to people who will monitor the service for two months.
The project is the result of a proposal by Olympus. As of Sept. 16, the Yomiuri Shimbun began providing general and sports news over the service. The Mainichi Shimbun began distributing articles for people with hearing difficulties and for the elderly on Sept. 20. The Asahi Shimbun began to provide articles from its bilingual weekly, the Asahi Weekly for English Learners, on Sept. 22.
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Hanshin Tigers' Victory Spurs Osaka Sports Dailies
The Hanshin Tigers baseball team, based in the Osaka area, clinched its first Central League pennant in 18 years on Sept. 15, scoring the fourth league championship in the club's history.
Five sports dailies in the Osaka area issued extras on the Tigers' victory and pumped up their print runs of the next day's morning issues. They also jointly sold a complete set of the day's five morning issues, commemorative special issues and pictorial magazines.
The five companies refrained from distributing their extras in areas where large crowds were expected to gather in order to avoid any mishaps in mad scrambles to get a paper.
The Sports Nippon issued two extras. It printed about 11,000 copies of the first extra at 5:30 p.m., when the Tigers beat the Hiroshima Toyo Carp. Sports Nippon staff then stood in front of Osaka Station and other busy downtown areas to hand them out at 7:30 p.m. when the loss by the second-place Yakult Swallows to the Yokohama Baystars sealed the Tigers' league championship. Later, the sports daily distributed another 8,000 copies of a second extra with a picture of Tigers manager Senichi Hoshino being tossed into the air by his team.
Nikkan Sports issued 30,000 copies of its extra, Hochi issued about 25,000, and Daily Sports 20,000. Sankei Sports was the only main sports paper not to issue an extra. Hochi and Daily Sports also respectively issued 30,000 and 12,000 copies of their extras in Tokyo.
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Media Ethics Council holds Annual Meeting
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The National Council to Promote Ethics in Mass Media, comprising newspaper, broadcasting, publishing and advertising groups, held its 47th annual meeting on Sept. 25-26 in Aomori City. The council was established to enhance the ethics of the mass media and to defend the freedom of speech and expression. Its founders include NSK, the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan (NAB), 10 associations in publishing, moviemaking and advertising, and 10 regional media ethics councils. It is Japan's only such organization serving various media industries.
The council holds monthly meetings and regional general assemblies to study regulations on media activities or other matters related to mass-media ethics. The annual convention reviews the results of these activities and also promotes the defense of freedom of expression beyond the media industries.
Japanese media have been facing a growing challenge to their freedom. The government has been rolling out laws and regulations restricting media activities on the pretext of protecting human rights, privacy and juveniles.
The government has moved on widespread public distrust in the media related to so-called "media scrums", or pack reporting in which gangs of reporters harass and invade the lives of news subjects. Responding to the situation, a record 307 representatives from 117 member companies attended the annual meeting on the theme, "The state, the citizens, and the media.''
The first day of the two-day meeting began with a plenary session that broke up into discussions in six sub-groups. Four of the groups discussed matters linked to news reporting and two discussed advertising case studies.
One of the groups discussed "media regulations and media ethics," addressing the Personal Information Protection Law that took force in May, the proposal of a quasi-jury system for criminal trials, and other issues expected to lead to further limits on media activities. The participants expressed real concern about the government's moves to limit the freedom of the press.
The group on "news reporting of crimes and accidents and the role of the media" discussed the so-called "media scrum" issue, studying various approaches on juvenile crimes such as the recent abduction-murder of an infant in Nagasaki City, and news related to former North Korean abductees.
The group on "war reporting and media responsibility" discussed how to be objective and maintain independence in war by re-examining the Iraq war. Some participants said objective reporting was next to impossible amid the propaganda and the flood of information. On news about North Korea, some participants said they are not being successful in keeping enough distance from the general public's hostility to North Korea.
The group on "social change and the mission of the mass media" discussed gender and the media for the first time. One national newspaper presented guidelines it is using to try to end gender discrimination in terms and expressions. Citing a newspaper report that attributed brisk sales of packed foods to an increase in working women, one participant said that both the elderly and housewives are buying such foods, dismissing the media analysis as shallow-minded. Another participant complained about newspaper criticism of male workers taking parental leave, saying his company has held a labor-management meeting to address the challenges of raising children.
The annual convention adopted a resolution after the group meetings. It expressed continued opposition to downplaying the importance of a free media and condemned the tightening regulation of the media. The council also reaffirmed its mission of reminding the public that the survival of a democratic society depends on maintaining the independence of the media from all forms of authority, and defending the freedom to gather and report the news.
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Nihon Shinbun Kyokai
The Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association
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Copyright 2003 Nihon Shinbun Kyokai
All right reserved
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