<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;">Thanks for your insights,Roger.<div>I have been dismayed at the coverage myself and the endless lists of lies,misinterpretations and ignorance/arrogance in all the European media.I turned on to the BBC World channel yesterday and only lasted three minutes.A special correspondent sent from China appeared on the screen.This has been key to the whole issue,most journalists are now based there,not in Japan,and have thus little or no language skills and surprisingly very little general and basic knowledge about Japan which has suffered greatly from this absence since newspapers and TV channels decided that they had to move to the new economic power in the area.This correspondent was about to interview Chinese nationals waiting outside their embassy and happily introduced his report by saying that "more than half of the workers in Japanese factories are Chinese"...
Stunned,I switched off.</div><div>A few days earlier,Spain's most important paper announced that the Japanese emperor in an extremely unusual move had addressed their people for the first time in history...When I complained,they said they had not taken into account official acts but addresses like this in a time of crisis.I then asked if addressing the nation for the first time to announce inconditional surrender after the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WW2 was crisis enough for them.They ended up elastoplasting the article here and there with little interest.</div><div>Of course,the news theatre has now moved elsewhere and Japan,or should I say the foreigners in Japan whose fate so seemed to worry their governtments and the media,forgetting the real victims,does not feature as prominently today.After all,the big nuclear explosion did not happen and their audiences might be getting tired of yet another funny report about those odd
Japanese.</div><div>A while ago,I was watching a press conference organised by the Tokyo Fire Brigade chiefs that had travelled to Fukushima to help.One of them was really moved and teary trying to convey the disaster zones he had travelled through (by the way,foreign media has discovered-and made a big point of-the capacity of the Japanese to cry) while another,ten times more verbally able and confidence-exuding than any of the Tepco engineers and Nuclear Agency spokesmen,explained how they had carried their operations and stretched their hosepipes to better dose the reactors.</div><div>While he was doing so,he was showing a photocopied diagram to which he had added some fire brigade cars in red,I found this most endearing and called my attention again to the whiteboards with written words and numbers we had seen all week.What in other countries would have been simulations,powerpoints and slides,here had been basically pen and paper or board.<br>Long
again,apologies,so much to reflect upon...</div><div><br></div><div>Maria-Jose Gonzalez<br>--- On <b>Sat, 19/3/11, Roger Macy <i><macyroger@yahoo.co.uk></i></b> wrote:<br><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"><br>From: Roger Macy <macyroger@yahoo.co.uk><br>Subject: Media coverage of the quake and tsunami in Japan<br>To: "KineJapan" <KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu><br>Date: Saturday, 19 March, 2011, 9:45 PM<br><br><div id="yiv1780087497">
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<h1 style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 6pt;"><u><font size="5">Media coverage of the quake and
tsunami in Japan</font></u></h1>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal">Dear KineJapaners,</p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal"><span style="">I was also glad to have the silence on this
list broken and to hear from friends.<span style="">
</span>I sincerely hope that those I have not yet heard from are safe and do not
have friends or relatives afflicted by these tragedies.
</span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal">There have been direct and
indirect references to media coverage of the disaster on the threads
‘Fundraising Screening of CALF …’ and ‘the eerie silence on KineJapan …’ [which
we have well-and-truly broken!].<span style="">
</span>But I would like to hear of members’ takes on the coverage when they are
ready.<span style=""> </span>My own contribution is a
little long, so feel free to file or delete.</p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal">When I turned on this Saturday
morning, here in the UK, <span style=""> </span>just
before 8am (in fact, to set my radio timer), there was a studio interview
started, on BBC News 24, in a ‘Newswatch’ slot, of Kevin Blackhurst., who I see
is Controller of the channel.</p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal">I should straightway give some
credit that the interview took place, even though, to me, Blackhurst this week
has seemed like pornographer-in-chief.<span style="">
</span>The interviewer (didn’t get a name) was relaying viewers’ complaints that
the BBC and other channels had unnecessarily despatched and fronted star
reporters, when some pooling with other channels, namely ITN news, would have
been more appropriate, and that the reporting had been too excitable.<span style=""> </span>Blackhurst posited that his people were
reporting, not presenting, a proposition with which I absolutely disagree.<span style=""> </span>He also answered in a way that the
‘that’ he purported to be answering was the presentation of the nuclear
situation, not the actual disaster that has actually already happened.<span style=""> </span>To my mind, that was a full admission of
guilt.</p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal">The other topic of viewers’ – no,
the audience’s – complaints that I heard was not being able to hear the
headlines over the jingles. In this brief discussion<span style=""> </span>‘hear’ and ‘understand’ were used
interchangeably – an equivalence that is fundamentally misconceived for
reporting from a non-english-speaking country.<span style=""> </span>This, to me, was the subject that should
have been discussed and wasn’t.</p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal">The jingles for 8am then came on
– somewhat muted, I thought - and the Libyan situation was covered.<span style=""> </span>When we got to
Japan , a named reporter was interviewed with a
Tokyo backdrop and presented <u>only</u> the
situation concerning the nuclear plants at
Fukushima .<span style=""> </span>We were told that the
Fukushima fifty were
getting massive amounts of radiation. “Massive” was a naked epithet, given fully
pornographic emphasis. [ I have read, <u>read</u> in the Guardian, I think, that
that the team had been both considerably reinforced and rotated – any
clarification gratefully received.] He did say that radiation in
Tokyo was negligible but that was it – nothing else in
Japan was newsworthy – onto the next
story, this one’s dying.</p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal">To my mind, it’s the editing
that’s at fault.<span style=""> </span>The stars perform
as directed.<span style=""> </span>Nothing gets
corrected.<span style=""> </span>The nearest to a
correction is that ‘large/massive earthquake in
Tokyo ’ on Radio4 gets superseded by maps.<span style=""> </span>But we were told, for example, that
several trains were missing, including a shinkansen with 400 people and we get
shown pictures of mangled local trains.<span style="">
</span>I’m told that the Japanese media have reported that all trains were
evacuated, but desensationalizing isn’t newsworthy.</p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal">I had sworn, after the
Twin-towers attack, and its toll of time and depression, never again to inflict
upon myself those weeks of woefully edited news.<span style=""> </span>It should not, in 2001, have taken weeks
for the purported death toll to come down below 100,000 and for us to understand
that just about everyone below the impacts had got out.<span style=""> </span>Numbers, thankfully, seem to one thing
our transported stars seem to be able to pick up, so the casualties, although of
an appalling magnitude, are already being reported more responsibly than in
2001. [But they have to be served up in western numerals for them; ‘daiichi’ is
conveyed as a place name.]<span style=""> </span>Alas,
that responsibility seems to be confined to that one ‘island’ where they are
following the Japanese media.</p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal">The complaint I hear here is of
the sheer imposition and insensitivity of imposing our stars upon the
hospitality of desperate people in need - and there are, after all, hundreds of
national audiences to be entertained by different teams.<span style=""> </span>I accept that conveying the tragedy and
getting a sense that <u>some</u> survived is important news reporting and is
best done by interview.<span style=""> </span>But if the
interviewees need to be translated, what is gained by having an english-speaking
interviewer? – given that so much understanding and initiative has to be lost in
the process?<span style=""> </span>More importantly, in
terms of ethnic prejudice, why is a victim report only true if mediated through
an english-speaking star?</p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal">Lack of language skills in the
newsroom is deplorable but actually surmountable in this media age, with a
little humility.<span style=""> </span>Since many clips
are endlessly repeated in ‘breaking news’, a posting on-line would rapidly
elicit a translation (which should, for safety’s sake, be attributed).<span style=""> </span>If newsrooms want to<span style=""> </span>prefer voice-overs to subtitles they
will doubtless pursue that.<span style=""> </span>Even
without necessity, there is some acceptance of small-screen subtitles
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/mar/04/the-killing-bbc-danish-crime-thriller/print)
but, in any case, there is no excuse for ducking both formats and bluffing it
out without star-led descriptions of pictures already seen.<span style=""> </span>By that stage, we have descended to
something that should fairly be called pornography</p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal">Postscript: clearly, I did not
keep my media-self-denying vow, to my bitter regret.<span style=""> </span>It’s harder, of course, with everyone
phoning to ask after my daughter, sensationalised by coverage by more unbridled
pornography elsewhere. <span style=""> </span>[Mrs
Kamahara is fine in Tokyo, a bit demoralised like others, about the ex-pats
leaving, but happy that her sister-in-law with a baby to feed has gone down to
the family in Nara. And she’s found toilet-paper.]</p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal">If you got this far, thanks for
reading it.</p>
<p style="MARGIN:4pt 0cm 0pt;" class="yiv1780087497MsoNormal">Roger</p></font></div>
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