Media reflection

The media and its influence on me.

The earthquake happened Friday afternoon.  My sister, her husband and their three primary school aged children were due to fly out of Sydney the following afternoon to arrive on Sunday morning.   A flurry of communication ensued... cancel? don't cancel?  what to do?   Media was crucial to making a decision.  The situation on Friday was grim  - that the tsunami caused devastation was clear, the extent was not. I spoke to my sister on Sat before they left for the airport and told them the trains were back on and though there would be aftershocks and possible electric disruptions that it was safe to come.  And so they came.

I suggested to my sister to get the kids into a state where aftershocks wouldn't distress them. She's  a genius. She had already developed an adventure point system - the kids got points for new foods and new experiences  - if they could accumulate enough adventure points they could go go Disneyland. (In the end it was Universal Studios Japan).  Aftershocks were just added to the list of many new experiences and the kids found it an exciting way to accumulate points without making any effort.

I kept the television off almost the whole time they were here.  It was their first time in Japan and I wanted them to enjoy it, despite everything. I didn't cut myself of from news though,  the internet was an invaluably discreet way of keeping informed and when they crashed in the evening the tv went on.   Their policy the whole time was to comply with Aus. govt. advice.  Though I felt deeply for the Sanriku, the tsunami wasn't affecting the mechanics of daily life in greatly  Tokyo.  I was relieved that despite an earthquake of that magnitude, actual earthquake damage  was relatively light.  Things seemed OK in Tokyo.

In the first four of five days the media reporting did not make me anxious.    I am the only foreigner I know who didn't have friends or family anxiously urging me to leave. They tend to be media sceptics which also helped. Perhaps because I was blogging about it and they could see my accounts were quite different to a lot of the media they were encountering. When they encountered reporting dubious reporting - like Tokyo had no food - they knew it was false.  In a way I was became the media that they believed.     A further factor to being calm is being on two Japan based email groups, both of which have a lot of level headed people who were often armed with accurate and insightful information.   There was no hysteria on either list, some members left for overseas, the vast majority did not.

Initially I became anxious though being out and about in Tokyo rather than from the media.  In Omotesando I think on the Tuesday, shops were shutting and it was only 3pm.  There was an eeriness that made me deeply uneasy... it felt like people shutting up to be at home with their families when Armageddon came.  Irrational, and I knew it was irrational at the time, but it felt like everyone had information that I didn't have... there were much fewer peolpe around.   We were took a Ginza line train at 5pm and having just warned the kids it might be quite squashy and there were plenty of seats to sit down.  Things weren't normal and the media wasn't helping me to understand what was happening.  I knew that the situation in Fukushima was serious, but  the air radiation in Tokyo wasn't exceeding limits... the British nuclear advice supported the idea that things were OK...

I suggested on the Wed that they go to Kansai ahead of time, just to be precautionate also  since so much of Tokyo was shut they could take a detour via Takayama and see somewhere else.   It turned out to be a good decision... Friday morning the situation in Fukushima seemed dire - neither Japanese nor foreign media could make sense of it for me.  I was both sad and relieved they left, if something happened to my husband or me, we could live with that, but not if we had put them in danger. When headlines flashed that Tokyo water had high radiation, I was very relieved they were far from Kanto even though we had an unopened box of water, sent by someone a couple of years ago for o-chugen (mid year gift giving) to offer then.


A couple of disjointed comments


The international media has come in for considerable criticism for its reporting of the 11 March earthquake and its aftermath.  Though much of the criticism is deserved, an analytical framework based on Japanese and international media risks creating a false dichotomy that downplays problems in the Japanese reporting and overlooks stellar reporting and analysis from foreign news agencies.  A discourse seems to have developed that foreign media was bad and irresponsible, and Japanese media was calm, though perhaps down playing fears to greatly.  It:s not really that simple.

I have blogged previously about stories that piqued my interest - there are a lot more I could write about.
True? story from a Vietnamese in Tohoku
Charlie Brooker media critique
Gratuitous reporting from NHK

Something that hasn't been discussed much is why the reporting was sensational.  There is a kind of understanding its because the media is just trying to attract viewers / readers.  This is true for sure in some cases but I don't think it's just that. This interpretation misses the point that the number of foreign reporters in Japan has declined.  Also many that are here rely on interpreters to find and get stories.    Part of the reason for problems with coverage is that there are few expert reporters and media outlets were scraping around trying to find 'authorities.'  I was contacted by the Guardian to write, several friends had media outlets post to their blogs asking for contact about a story.  Another factor for sensationalism is perhaps that it is easier to sensationalise than to analyse... Reporting to create fear is perhaps easier than reporting to create understanding, especially when lay people tend to be uninformed about the intricacies of nuclear energy.

Another issues is even though sensationalism  usually doesn't enhance understanding, it does bring the attention of the public to the matter.  How would the people of the Sanriku be faring if media attention treated it as a passing natural disaster.  The upside, at least in the short term, of sensationalism is the springboard it provides for donations.  The floods in Pakistan last year (2010) displaced 20 million people... and yet images that captured the public attention are negligible, so were donations...    The danger of course though is needing to out sensationalise the previous disaster... But would aid be forthcoming to the same extent without the media .... unlikely.



Articles I found interesting
Praise for NHK's calm - Washington Post
Kamaishi student evacuations, 2900 survive, Japan Times
More to be posted later