From the New Year's Message of NSK Chairman Shinichi Hakoshima
--Fighting the Regulation of Reporting, and Promoting Newspapers In Education

I address this New Year's message to everyone involved in news reporting.

In the wake of the war in Iraq, the world is gripped by growing new threats of terrorism due to the delay in postwar reconstruction, and there has been increasing disarray, as demonstrated by the killings of the two Japanese diplomats in Iraq. It is not yet clear how the capture of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein might affect the situation. The decision by the Koizumi Cabinet to deploy the Self-Defense Forces in Iraq has prompted real controversy at home, while drawing international attention. Japan's stance as a "pacifist nation" ever since World War II appears to be nearing an end. For newspaper reporting, it looks as if this will be a "year of decision."

Despite all the talk about economic bottoming-out, the prospects for a Japanese economic recovery remain uncertain as the yen's value against the dollar continues to grow. Likewise, prospects are increasingly murky for structural reforms in the pension system, road construction and local finances. This year looks likely to be yet another difficult one for the Japanese economy.

And amid all of these circumstances, momentum continues to grow for the government's moves to tighten control over the media.

In 2002, the NSK Board of Directors drafted and publicized urgent statements of opposition to the government-proposed Personal Information Protection Bill and the Human Rights Protection Bill, which we continue to suspect will pave the way for state interference with the constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of expression. The former bill was enacted in May of last year after some amendments, while the latter was dropped due to the dissolution of the Lower House for a general election. The Personal Information Protection Law will go into full effect in April 2005. In amendments to the original bill, news reporting activities were exempted and it might be safe to say that the media will be safe from any direct repercussions from the law. However, sales, advertising and other business activities of media organizations will be subject to regulation by the law. The newspaper industry will have to study this matter. At the same time, we must keep a close watch to ensure that the law is not implemented in a way that could narrow the freedom of expression or the freedom of the press in the future.

The government office to promote judicial-system reform is now considering the introduction of a jury system in which ordinary people will take part in the process of deliberating and rendering verdicts. It has been said that in order to ensure the fairness of trials, proposals are being studied on obliging the media not to report in a biased way and to thereby impose de facto regulations on news reporting, as well as generally making it difficult for the media to get access to people who have served as jurors.

We must recognize the fact that these moves to regulate media activities are in part a response to a public outcry against past infringements of privacy and other human rights that have resulted from inappropriate news reporting. Therefore, I must emphasize yet again that it is our pressing task to resolve internal media-related problems through our own voluntary efforts within our media organizations and by solidifying relations of mutual trust with our readers, viewers and listeners.

However, any moves to impose legal regulations on media activities or to legally limit the freedom of the press would constitute a denial of all of our efforts to properly accomplish the missions of newspapers and other media. We must steadfastly oppose all such moves by staying vigilant and making our opposition absolutely clear.

As for the kisha (press) club system, foreign media organizations and government bodies have continued to demand its abolition. But most such demands and criticism are based misunderstandings about the actual functioning of the kisha clubs. The NSK Editorial Affairs Committee continues to steadfastly defend the usefulness of the kisha club system by supporting the activities of the committee's press club issues subcommittee and by adhering to the official NSK stance on the matter.

In my speech at the annual newspaper convention last year, I referred to the rapid decline in newspaper subscription among the younger generations as one of our most pressing problems. The aggregate circulation of newspapers in this country has been on a downtrend since a peak in 1997. Taking this situation seriously, we must use the full power of our industry to implement mid- and long-term measures to reverse the trend.

In 2003, the NSK Circulation Committee designated April 6 as "Newspaper Reading Day" and the ensuing one-week period as "Springtime Newspaper Week" to push campaigns to entice the younger generations, who constitute a large part of the people who are not reading newspapers, to become subscribers. Through comprehensive public relations activities aimed at non-subscribers, we can create situations that put the open pages of current newspapers directly into the hands of prospective subscribers. In this second year of this drive, our ad hoc sales promotion committee is set to launch a massive campaign focusing on Newspaper Reading Day, using the experience that we have gained through our "Read Me." campaign that ran up until last year. By systematically combining the efforts of our committees, we must generate a major industry-wide PR drive for new subscribers.

At the same time, we must continue to raise the profile of the NEWSPARK Newspaper Museum, the Newspaper Foundation for Education & Culture and the Newspaper in Education (NIE) program to foster future readers and supporters. In fiscal 2003, the number of schools taking part in NIE activities grew by 21 to 389. With just the 23 more schools already designated by our regional promotion councils, we will take the total number of schools in the program beyond our target of 400. As for the new drive to deliver newspapers to all classrooms as backed by the Japan Newspaper Sales Association in cooperation with the NSK Circulation Committee, the Circulation Committee is soon due to announce its official position on supplying the newspapers needed for the campaign. We expect that the newspapers will be used as educational materials in as many classrooms as possible, thereby expanding NIE activities.

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