Culture conundrum
By Hsin-yin Lee Posted Dec 1 2008
The Japanese public knows plenty about popular culture in the United States thanks almost exclusively to Hollywood movies and ads.
To many Americans, however, Japan is still a mysterious land occupied by ancient beliefs. American correspondents in Tokyo report little on cultural matters in Japan. Similarly, Japanese correspondents in the U.S. don’t spend much time on American entertainment news.
Cultural news, reporters working in both countries say, is a hard sell.
The annual National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington D.C. draws more than a million tourists from all over the world. The first of those cherry trees came from Japan as a gesture of friendship 96 years ago. From sushi to sumo, lantern walking to folklore singing, Japanese culture is showcased during the events.
According to a 2007 review by the World Association of Newspapers, the world’s five largest newspapers were in Japan. The top five totaled a daily circulation of 38 million. Out of 504 Japanese foreign correspondents, 144 are based in the United States.
Yet Japanese correspondents devote little energy to reporting on the festival. They say they don’t have the time and resources to cover “soft” topics.
“Tokyo doesn’t allow us to have long footage of cultural reporting,” said Takaaki Abe, senior producer of Nippon Television’s Washington bureau.
“We are going to cover the Cherry Blossom Festival because it is one of the U.S.-Japan relations,” Abe said.
It is extremely hard for Japanese correspondents in Washington to devote themselves to cultural issues. Reporting and researching on Capitol Hill consume most of their energy. Their coverage is highly homogenous, focusing intensively on political and economic affairs, and there is rarely a human interest story.
In Japan’s extremely competitive media environment, accuracy is not the only concern — there is efficiency, too.
Nobuyuki Sato, Washington bureau chief of the Jiji Press, pointed out the fierce competition on hard news between Japan’s two dominating wire services, Jiji Press and Kyodo News.
“As a news agency, if we make a report that’s wrong, even if it is breaking news five minutes earlier, it will be a disaster. The credibility issue is very important,” he said, “but if we delay five minutes more than Kyodo News, it is also a disaster.”
Many American correspondents overseas report they also have a hard time garnering interest in cultural stories.
Willis Witter, the Washington Times’s acting foreign editor and former Tokyo correspondent, said a Japanese cultural story is a tough sell for any American newspaper unless there is some connection to the United States.
“If you are in the Muslim world today, especially in southwest Asia, the culture becomes extremely important and even interesting because there is a connection between culture and terrorism,” Witter said.
Using cultural events as a news hook to introduce serious international affairs is common among correspondents. A look at a foreign country’s culture can help readers better understand the issues presented. Yet it is almost impossible to see an American paper publishing a cultural story without obvious political or economic significance.
The phenomenon is worldwide. Foreign correspondents who write a lot on Bollywood movies may have noted its similar economic structure to the American film industry; likewise, discussion of whether the Beijing Olympic mascots, “Fuwa,” or “good luck dolls,” should be blamed for recent massacres in China provided journalists a unique anecdote to examine China in times of turbulence.
Politics is often the essence of any cultural issue. In response to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, four cherry trees were cut down in what was speculated as revenge. To prevent future vandalism for the remainder of the war, the trees were referred to as the “Oriental” flowering cherries.
The sensitivity of cultural issues is often raised during wartime. It tangles with political and commercial interests and magnifies the imbalance of world power distribution.
For example, the Web site of the World Socialist, a popular left-wing organization, claimed in 2003 that the looting in Iraq’s museum was a conspiracy of the Bush administration. “The goal of the U.S. military occupation is to impose colonial-style domination over Iraq and seize control of its vast oil resources,” Patrick Martin, the author, said.
“Attacking the cultural resources that connect the Iraqi people to 7,000 years of history is part of the process of systematically destroying their national identity,” Martin said.
The condemnation provided another perspective through which people see the war. It seems that politics and culture are ultimately inseparable, and together they make the most compelling story.
Other than news priority, foreign correspondents often struggle on even more practical issues — few of them speak foreign languages fluently.
Working with a fixer, which means hiring local people to overcome language and cultural barriers, is usual for foreign correspondents. They often ask fixers to produce transcripts and check facts so the news will be more timely and accurate.
However, compared to others, American correspondents are less equipped with foreign language ability to conduct in-depth interviews. And they rely heavily on translators to explore and explain foreign experiences at least during their initial stay. The lack of language skills not only makes communication harder, but also threatens the integrity of the news outlet.
Dafna Linzer, a Washington Post reporter, recently criticized Al-Hurra, the U.S.-founded, Arab-language television network, which promotes the U.S. government point of view in the Middle East. Linzer and the CBS program 60 Minutes reported that, among other things, Al-Hurra ran biased stories about the Holocaust Denial meeting in Iran, and also accused Israel of racism.
Linzer said that Al-Hurra president Brian Conniff’s inability to speak Arabic has seriously damaged the station’s credibility. She said that Conniff cannot even understand what his Middle Eastern staff members discuss during editorial meetings because “no one offered Conniff a simultaneous translation.”
Some members from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan even suggested the government not accredit foreign correspondents who could not pass a Japanese-language test. According to FCCJ’s Web site, there was argument that such an act would be impractical and counter-productive, but those promoting the action “dismissed such concerns, convinced language testing was a ‘realistic’ solution to combating the ‘problem’ of ‘biased’ foreign media coverage.”
On the dilemma of cultural reporting, some say that attitudes are what matter.
Michael Lev, the Chicago Tribune’s business editor and former Tokyo bureau chief, identified himself as equal parts of a political, economic and social affairs reporter.
“We need to understand how people in other countries work, think, dream and worry, because in a globalized world that matters a lot,” he said. He said he paid extreme attention to the pop culture and details that locals cannot tell, such as the homogeny of the Japanese society.
“It’s just as important to understand how the Japanese families interact — their value, their outlook — as it is to understand what the Japanese government thinks about, for example, the Iraq war.”
Perhaps journalism itself carries more than information; it carries cultural communication, as well, in both directions.
Lev gave cultural issue reporting a status it deserves.
He said: “I tried very hard to look for universal themes and truths in the subject matter I covered, to give people something more to think about and maybe help in some small way to encourage — I don’t know — world peace, maybe.”