Foreign news bureaus in Japan are pulling up stakes and moving to greener pastures. The most recent evacuee, The Voice of America, a long-standing fixture in Japan's foreign news community, dismissed its domestic support staff in April and is en route to South Korea. The Christian Science Monitor was another recent defector. Over the past year, newspapers that have closed their Tokyo bureaus include the Chicago Tribune, The Independent of London, Dagens Nyheter of Sweden and Corriere della Sera of Italy, just to name a few.
To be sure, many news organizations remain in one form or another and a few have even expanded. The amazing growth of Bloomberg and the consistency of Reuters' expansion are both good examples. Meanwhile, some Japanese broadcast news outfits have formed joint ventures with the Western media. The existing agreement between Nikkei and CNBC is generating far more coverage of the news from Japan for CNBC. Nontraditional news, human interest, trade and technical content also seems to have prospered. Charles Pomeroy, a longtime Japan resident and author currently writing on international health care, said, "Today, specialized journalists seem to be in the majority." Charles Smith, former bureau chief at both The Financial Times and the Far Eastern Economic Review, seems to share a similar opinion: "While interest in the Japan story is weak, Japanese culture, food, sumo, manga, anime films, architecture and perhaps even music are percolating around the world. This may even eventually lead to a more rounded editorial view of the country as a place where real people live." Even with specialized content and smaller news outlets in play online, the trend of media consolidation worldwide has meant fewer media owners and fewer actual outlets. This, in turn, reduces competition and encourages content sharing -- and that equals fewer foreign bureaus. What remains of the old school smoke-filled news bureaus in Japan often consists of a single bureau chief who doubles as the lead, if not only, reporter. Further, when necessity demands, that same individual might don another cap and become the night janitor. A good indicator of Western media representation in Japan is the fluctuating regular membership at The Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan (FCCJ). Regular members are defined as those in the country on a journalist visa or otherwise recognized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as working in the trade for an overseas company. This year regular membership at the club is at a 20-year low and shows little signs of picking up.
So why does Japan not count as much? That question often rumbles around the tables at the FCCJ. Is it frustration with the dominance of the kisha club system or the static economic climate in Tokyo? Is it the usurping by the wire services of the foreign correspondents' traditional role? Or maybe it's because of China's rising influence? Charles Smith thinks the emerging dragon is a major player in this dynamic. "China has displaced Japan as 'the' East Asian story," he said.
In fact, it is all of the above and more as Japan must now play second fiddle, overshadowed by the conflict in Iraq. With the winds now blowing from the Middle East, not the Far East, it's hardly a surprise that reporting priorities have been reshuffled at news organizations. (Ironically, the pan-Arab satellite network Al-Jazeera opened a small bureau in Tokyo early this year, its second in Asia after Beijing.) But the decline in coverage of Japan, the world's second-largest economy, began long before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and it's been a cumulative process.
"The good old days ... were the 1980s and the very early '90s," said Canadian Darryl Gibson, an international editor at Kyodo News. "The 'Japan miracle' played widely, salaryman drone stories bucked up recession-blanked drones in North America, the economy boomed."
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"China has displaced Japan as 'the' East Asian story." -- Charles Smith, former bureau chief for The Financial Times and the Far Eastern Economic Review |
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News organizations ate up news about Japanese companies buying important overseas properties, companies and even priceless art treasures. "Canada had close to a dozen people reporting daily from Japan and editors wanted 'their' reporter to match or beat the competitor's on a daily basis," Gibson said.But the "buzz" died slowly as the yen rose and expenses for overseas postings to Japan climbed. A recession at home cut budgets and closed bureaus. "With no competing papers, radio or TV showing up, demand dwindled to nearly zero and has shown few signs of picking up since," Gibson added.
One journalist at The New York Times said Reuters Television was cut and eventually closed from 1998 to 2000. From 2000 to 2001 Business Week went from four full-time reporters to two. Only two positions remain at the Times since 2001.
Jessica Smith, the bureau chief for the Marketplace program on U.S. public radio, thinks the exodus is because "Japan is not a threat to the U.S., militarily or economically." When asked what it would take to get Japan back onto the Western media map, she replied, "Only the unthinkable, if Japan sold all of its U.S. Treasury bonds and purchased Euro- or Yuan-based bonds instead. Or if Tokyo went ahead with an independent defense policy and kicked the U.S. military out of Japan or unilaterally bombed North Korea." Among some foreign correspondents, blame for the disconnect with Japan has been aimed at the kisha club system, by which select local news organizations get access to official sources within the Japanese halls of power. Longtime newspaper man Eric Johnston, who has worked for The Japan Times and USA Today and is now based in Osaka, said, "Japan is falling off the world's media map partially because of this kind of arrogant, insular attitude." The kisha club issue was summed up by Andrew Horvat in his 1990 academic paper entitled "Invisible Obstacles: Perceptions of the Foreign Press in Japan." He noted that "foreign reporters see the press clubs primarily as xenophobic cliques. In fact, most of the discrimination by the clubs is directed against reporters from second-tier provincial papers, small trade publications and freelance writers working for weeklies and monthlies. Although there has been a marked improvement in access at some government agencies, notably the foreign ministry, the press clubs attached to law courts, the prosecutor's office and the police are still off limits to all but a small number of accredited reporters."
Recently, the Foreign Press in Japan (FPIJ) scored a major victory in its ongoing fight to gain access to official press conferences. On March 29 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) officially requested that all government agencies allow bearers of the MOFA Foreign Press ID card entrance to their on-the-record press conferences. But will the various ministries even listen to this "official request?" FPIJ Chairman Hans van der Lugt said, "Whether this will solve all problems will depend on the implementation." Observers of the journalism scene here see China as a more significant influence on coverage than the kisha club system. Akira Suzuki, director of the Foreign Press Center in Japan, said, "In the '80s so many Western media people came to Japan. Now I have the impression they are more interested in the growing political and economic influence of China." Jessica Smith thinks the rising influence of China means that China is both an economic and possible military threat. "It's the sexier story, so news organizations are diverting their resources," she said. Last year, when the Chicago Tribune closed its Tokyo bureau, it moved its correspondent to China. Japan's prolonged recession may also be to blame for the exodus and lackluster nature of reporting. "It seems to me the failure of Japan's economy to recover in a timely fashion is a major issue, although this failure in itself seems to be the country's longest-running story," said Pomeroy. "Oddly, it is this very recession that has also been responsible for driving down the costs of reporting in Japan. Granted, things are still expensive, but it's cheaper than ever." "The economic juggernaut stalled, so most editors no longer care what happens in Japan," Gibson added. "Fewer bureaus in Japan, so less competition for 'the story' and fewer phone calls to match a competitor's story -- and no complaints from clients demanding 'more Japan.'"
Many newspapers are now using stringers, or reporters paid by the article. As a result, the freelancer is in a better position here than ever before -- particularly as nontraditional news outlets may now be more interested in Japan-based content. Reporters and writers are rightfully complaining that rates are pitiably low. New media technology has also collapsed what some scholars call "the time-space convergence" -- the amount of time it takes for information to move from A to B. That phenomenon has changed the way foreign correspondents go about gathering and distributing the news. Correspondents do not need the overhead of an office anymore. They compose, produce and file on the spot or at the nearest coffee shop via wireless. As fewer and fewer dollars are being spent to fill an ever-growing media landscape, spending money on the landline doesn't make a lot of sense when you also have to pay the cell phone invoice.
Even with fewer bureaus, the essential challenge of newsgathering in Japan remains unchanged. This nation is as tough a story to crack as ever, if not even tougher now that Western representation is smaller, leaner and maybe even a bit meaner. Those reporters who remain have to dig to acquire real content, not just 250 words of "Today in Japan."
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