Shockingly Bad Journalism from Time Magazine
In the May 01, 2007 Time Magazine article “Okinawa-gate: The Unknown Scandal,” the issue of 1971 scandal in which a Mainichi reporter was fired for reporting information that embarassed the Japanese government is introduced to American readers. The article could have reported fairly on this issue of great concern, but instead reports in a tone that is clearly meant to make American readers think that Japan is far worse than their country when it comes to freedom. Here’s the opening paragraph of the article [emphasis added]:
Freedom of the press is a constitutionally guaranteed right in Japan — as long as you stick to what the authorities want you to write. How does a developed democratic country manage to rank lower in last year’s Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom index than Ghana or Bosnia? Just ask Takichi Nishiyama, whose promising career as a star political journalist at a national daily ended in 1971, when he came across what should have been a career-making scoop — official documents revealing that the Japanese government had gone around a deal approved by Japan’s legislature and secretly paid the U.S. $4 million to ends its occupation of Okinawa in 1972.
Gee, this Japan place sounds like a bastion of tyranny. However, GlobalTalk 21 has pointed out a major fact that Time Magazine’s article fails to include:
Reporters Without Borders does rank Japan behind Ghana and Bosnia, 51st to be exact, only two places ahead of that bastion of oppression, the United States of America. (My condolences to the oppressed masses at TIME HQ.)
More on the Time Magazine’s Japan-reporting problems can be found in GlobalTalk 21′s full post on this topic.
