関西大学 鍋島先生の講義における
ゲストスピーチ
２００６年６月２０日（火）
“The Japanese and U.S. News Media — A Personal Comparison”
ブライアン コバート
Brian Covert
Q & A: FEEDBACK
Many thanks to Nabeshima-sensei and students for warmly welcoming me as your guest at Kansai University. Here are some of the questions from students of the class, especially concerning journalism and news media, followed by my brief answers. —BC
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Q-1: Why did you want to be a journalist?
A-1: I had always liked to write things since I was in primary school, and was encouraged by my grandmother to write poetry and share it with her. Although my grandmother had no formal higher education, she did have a very sharp mind and was always challenging herself mentally. From her, I learned to not be embarrassed or ashamed to write down my personal feelings, even if it was just a simple thing like a poem or a diary entry or a letter. So as a child I learned to write just for myself, privately, and to express my feelings using pen and paper. In my teenage years, especially around high school, I began to take an interest in news reporting. The “Watergate scandal” had surfaced and the corrupt U.S. president at that time, Richard Nixon, was forced to resign in disgrace. As a young person then, I saw clearly how journalism could change the course of a nation. Later on, during my college studies, I decided firmly to become a newspaper reporter, with the dream of becoming an overseas correspondent one day. I thought that being a journalist was one way to help to change society in a positive way; I still think so.
Q-2a: What’s the most difficult problem as a journalist?
Q-2b: Is it hard to be an international journalist?
A-2: The biggest problem for me in journalism was always time — or to be more exact, a lack of time. Writing news reports means you are constantly under deadline pressure. Of course, that’s the nature of the business! You have to get the story written accurately and speedily. As time went on, I became used to the deadline pressure (I had no other choice), and looking back now, I see that working under such severe deadline pressure has helped my writing become clearer and more concise. These days, though, it seems that people in the news field pay more attention to speed than accuracy, and the quality of the news often drops as a result. That’s a trend in mainstream journalism that I don’t like. Nowadays, though, as an independent journalist, I can take a little more time to write stories the way I want to and double-check all the potential mistakes before they get into print. Reporting and editing news stories is hard, time-consuming work, but I still love it today as much as I did when I first started out more than 20 years ago.
Q-3: What did you do as a training, for improving your writing skills? Is there anything that we can try, too?
A-3: In a word or two: Keep writing! I was lucky enough to have had good teachers and positive experiences while studying journalism at university. But through all that, I just kept writing, writing, writing. Most of the time it was just for myself — poetry, short stories, letters to family and friends, and so on. But it always helped to keep my writing flexible and fresh, I found. Remember: Improving your writing skill is just the same as improving your skill, for example, in playing a musical instrument or playing sports: The more you do it, the more you improve. The less you do it, the less you improve. So, if you really want to improve your writing skill, then just keep writing…wherever and whenever you can!
Q-4a: In China and North Korea, media cannot have freedom and citizens don’t have opportunity to know many things. What do you think about it?
Q-4b: What do you think about North Korea these days?
Q-4c: What do you think North Korea recently?
Q-4d: What do you think about “North Korea problem”?
A-4: Several questions in the class seem to have come up about North Korea, so I’d like to touch on a few points about it here. Yes, there are restrictions in North Korea and China in what can be said and written publicly. But at the same time, there are good journalists in those countries, just like in every country, who are doing the best they can under those conditions. Second, the situation in North Korea is very sensitive and must be calmly handled by the international community as a whole, not just by two noisy countries (the United States and Japan) that claim that North Korea is a threat.
Third, some people are talking about imposing economic sanctions against North Korea. But it is very important for us to remember that any such sanctions would greatly hurt the ordinary, average North Korean mothers, fathers, children, grandparents — the same kind of ordinary, working citizens that live and work in any country. Economic sanctions on Iraq, for example, have destroyed the social structure of that country, leading to an estimated half-million deaths of young Iraqi people. We must not repeat that genocidal policy anywhere else in the world.
And lastly, our attention should be focused instead on the corrupt American government officials and multinational corporations that gain lots of profits from wars in the world. The United States government, at the moment, is a far more dangerous threat to world peace and stability than Korea.
Q-5: What do you think of explaining name of underage offender? Do you agree?
A-5: If you mean reporting in the news media the names of young people convicted of crimes, no, I’m against it. The names of young people must not be published or identified in the news. Their privacy should be protected, since they are not yet adults. Unfortunately, the Japanese news media (and the U.S. news media, more and more) often ignore such high standards and publish the names of young criminal suspects and victims of violent crimes such as rape. The news media, in any country, must be very careful about this.
Q-6a: What do you think about Japanese mass media related to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi?
Q-6b: : What do you think about Japanese journalist’s activity?
A-6: I think there are many excellent journalists working in the mainstream news media here in Japan. But the news business in Japan is a notoriously closed world, and this must be changed. One of the ways we can change it is to demand that the “kisha club” system in Japan, which controls most of the information that Japanese press companies report to the public, be dismantled. Through the “kisha club” system in Japan, we are being deprived of the facts and truth in society that we all need to make wise decisions in our lives. No more “kisha clubs”!
At the same time, I think that the Japanese news media have given Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi an easy ride. Just like Bush and the U.S. news media, Koizumi seems to somehow intimidate Japanese reporters and news companies from asking tough questions and investigating questions about his background. Japanese and U.S. news reporters must be more active and united in acting as a watchdog against those in government and Big Business.
Q-7a: What topic do you interested in about Japan recently?
Q-7b: What kind of news are you interested in recently? I’m interested in the news that Japanese elementary school begin to teach English.
Q-7c: What topics are you interested in now?
Q-7d: What is the topic in Japan that you are most interested in recently?
A-7: A few questions came up on this point. These days, I am watching very carefully the changes that are taking place in Japanese society: Japan’s military is rapidly growing, social welfare benefits for elderly Japanese people are being cut, jobs are harder and harder to find for young Japanese people, and so on. Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution is in danger of being changed so that Japan can more easily take part in wars overseas. These are major changes in Japan’s role in the world. And it is important, I think, to watch what is happening all around us with open eyes and open minds. Is the current direction that Japan is now taking a good direction or a bad direction? This is what I am generally watching and reporting on these days.
Q-8: How did you find/decide the people/things you reported?
A-8: Just as I mentioned above: by keeping my eyes and ears open for new trends and new directions. I always look for areas of society that are not being reported by the mainstream news media, and then I try to see if there is anything new I can find to report to readers about it. To do that well, as a journalist you need to have a good network of sources who trust you and who trust the quality of your work. Without reliable sources, it would be impossible to report meaningful news stories.
Q-9a: What is the most important thing to be journalist?
Q-9b: What is the “journalism” for you? And what do you do as a journalist for?
Q-9c: What made you be happy when you work as a journalist?
Q-9d: What did you regret after you became a journalist?
A-9: The most important thing as a journalist (and for journalism in general) is try to be the “voice of the voiceless.” What does that mean? It does not mean reporting every little thing that a government spokesperson says at a press conference. Rather, being the “voice of the voiceless” means going out into society and reporting on the people who are ignored or even “invisible” in society. Every society in the world has those kinds of “voiceless” people, and I think it’s up to journalists — wherever they are — to get out of their comfortable, air-conditioned offices and talk to the average, ordinary working people who make up a society. This is especially true in a time of war. In Iraq, many foreign journalists are “embedded” with the U.S. military, which means those reporters eat, sleep and travel with U.S. soldiers. They often don’t even talk to Iraqi people. But they should! People say that reporters “embedded” with the U.S. military in Iraq are actually “in bed with” the military, and in a sense I agree. “Embedded reporters” can no longer be called “journalists” when they work under those conditions.
It makes me happy as a journalist when somehow, some way, my stories give people some new information that they hadn’t known of before. If those people take action on that new information to do something positive in society, that makes me even happier. And as for regrets, as I mentioned before, the one regret about being in journalism is the lack of time to do much else! I would be happier if I could better balance the time spent on my work and on other parts of my life.
Q-10: What do you think that what should we do to make media better? And what can we do?
A-10: Very good question! I encourage you to try a few things. First of all, look at all news reports with “critical eyes” from now on. Try to divide what you read or see or hear in the news media into two parts: (1) what information is being reported in the news, and (2) what information is NOT being reported in the news. This will help you to see news reports in a more balanced way, rather than just accepting all the information that is reported to you.
And next, don’t be shy about writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper/magazine or calling a broadcast station whenever you see or hear of a news report that is not correct or that is not complete. People who work in news companies are very sensitive to what the public thinks, so let them know how you feel about their news reporting. That kind of public feedback is necessary for a healthy news media in any society.
And lastly, think about creating your own news media! It could be in the form of a simple printed newsletter. Or it could be a website or a blog that covers news that is important to you. Or it could even be a community radio or TV station; we can see such small stations springing up here and there in Japan. The Internet and World Wide Web now make it possible for more people to create their own news media, wherever they are and whoever they are in society. Young people in the U.S. and other countries are very active in creating a new kind of “media system,” and I think it would be great if more young people in Japan could do the same kind of thing. As the popular saying goes: “Don’t hate the news media — BECOME the news media.”
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