TWO PACIFIC POWERS VIEW THE WORLD:
NEWS ON CBS AND TBS TELEVISION, 1993
Anne Cooper-Chen, Ph. D.
Lara Simms, MSJ
E. W. Scripps School of Journalism
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701
(614) 593-2611
[log in to unmask]
Abstract
This study looked at 309 stories from 30 randomly selected Tokyo
Broadcasting System newscasts (Japan) during January-June 1993 and compared them
to 283 stories on CBS newscasts (United States). Analysis showed that Japan
makes less room for the outside world (13.9% of stories) than does the United
States (20.8%). Geographic areas covered and the role of women as reporters
showed significant differences, while news topics were highly correlated. Japan
covered the United States much more thoroughly than vice-versa.
Submitted to the Radio-Television Journalism Division, Association for
Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Convention, Anaheim
August 10-13, 1996
The Japan portion of this research was conducted while the first author was
a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Japan 1992-93. The author would like to
thank Ms. Nilanjana Bardhan, Ms. Haijing Lu and Dr. Charles Chen for their help.
TWO PACIFIC POWERS VIEW THE WORLD:
NEWS ON CBS AND TBS TELEVISION, 1993
Abstract
This study looked at 309 stories from 30 randomly selected Tokyo
Broadcasting System newscasts (Japan) during January-June 1993 and compared them
to 283 stories on CBS newscasts (United States). Analysis showed that Japan
makes less room for the outside world (13.9% of stories) than does the United
States (20.8%). Geographic areas covered and the role of women as reporters
showed significant differences, while news topics were highly correlated. Japan
covered the United States much more thoroughly than vice-versa.
Submitted to the Radio-Television Journalism Division, Association for
Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Convention, Anaheim
August 10-13, 1996
TWO PACIFIC POWERS VIEW THE WORLD: NEWS ON CBS AND TBS TELEVISION, 1993
I. INTRODUCTION
Japan and the United States, although culturally poles apart, have in
common their economic might. The U.S. $5 trillion economy (the world's largest)
and the Japanese $3 trillion economy (second largest) together make up 42
percent of the world's GNP. Both of these economies support commercially
financed, highly developed TV systems.
Japanese and Americans share a healthy TV appetite, but the Japanese stay
glued to the tube longer. Each Japanese spends an average of three hours, 32
minutes per weekday and 4 hours, 23 minutes on Sunday watching television (NHK
survey in October 1995), compared to two hours, 26 minutes a day for each U.S.
resident (Nielsen survey in May 1993). The average Japanese household has its TV
set turned on for eight hours and eight minutes a day.
In both countries, viewers over 55 have the heaviest TV habits. Among
young people, the "subject of conversation in Japan among high school students
is . . . often about television and radio programs," whereas U.S. teenagers
would probably talk instead about the opposite sex (Sata 1991, 214).
In Japan, "intellectual snobbery is almost nil. . . conspicuous
non-ownership of television. . . is totally alien in Japanese society" (Kato
1988, 315). The visual orientation of the Japanese and the strict dichotomy
between uchi ("home") and soto ("outside") helped make television Japan's
medium of choice; television permits the Japanese to stay comfortably inside
while looking out at an uneasy world (Kitamura 1987, 144-45). In 1975,
television surpassed newspapers in Japan as the mass medium with the largest
amount of advertising revenues.
Similarities: U.S. and Japanese Television
These two nations of TV watchers have both reached nearly total TV
saturation, with ratios of one set per 1.4 people in the United States and one
set per 1.8 people in Japan. The following discussion will concentrate on the
Japan side of the equation, as its mass media are not well known in the West.
*Three dominant commercial networks. Japan's counterparts to ABC, CBS and
NBC are Fuji, Nihon TV (NTV) and the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS). Until
1994, Fuji routinely captured the largest audience share, but at this writing,
NTV and Fuji were running in a dead heat, with TBS breathing down their necks.
TBS, Fuji and NTV, as well as the smaller TV Asahi, have had round-the-clock
programming since the late 1980s.
*Innovations in technology. Inventors Charles Francis Jenkins and Philo T.
Farnsworth played key roles in the early history of U.S. television. At about
the same time, in the 1920s and 1930s, inventors Kenjiro Takayanagi (1899-1990)
and Hidetsugu Yagi (1886-1976), made important TV engineering innovations in
Japan. More recently, the "Hi-Vision" high definition (HDTV) system was
developed; since 1991, test broadcasting has been conducted for eight hours
daily by the Hi-Vision Promotion Association, established jointly by NHK,
commercial broadcasters and manufacturers.
*Minimal imports/ extensive exports of programs. The United States exports
so much TV programming that some accuse it of media imperialism (McPhail 1981;
Schiller 1976; Tunstall 1977). In the 1960s in Japan, one of many destination
for U.S. exports, viewers could see Hoss and Little Joe of "Bonanza" speaking
perfect (dubbed) Japanese. But by 1971, the balance had tipped; Japan, like the
United States, began exporting more TV programs than it imported (Ito 1990):
1971 imports- 2,000 hours exports- 2,200 hours
1992 imports- 2,843 hours exports- 19,546 hours
Of the imports in 1992, the lion's share still came from the United States
(2,300 hours). The 737 shows exported in 1992 included animated cartoons
(58.3%), dramas and movies, (15.5%) and quiz/variety programs (14.8%).
Differences: U.S. and Japanese Television
The wedding of the present emperor to commoner Michiko Shoda, whom he had
met at a tennis court, turned Japan into a nation of TV watchers. The lead time
between the couple's engagement in 1958 and the royal wedding on April 10, 1959,
gave manufacturers time to campaign for TV purchases, which then cost more than
a month's salary.
If a sense of history and imperial culture launched Japan into the TV age,
the United States rode in on star worship. Castleman and Podrazik (1982, v)
chose January 19, 1953, as "the point at which television became synonymous with
American popular culture." On that day, both the real Desi Arnaz, Jr. and the
fictitious Rickey Ricardo of the sitcom "I Love Lucy" were born into postwar
America. Other than these different geneses, the two TV cultures diverge in the
following ways:
*Pace of diffusion. Initial U.S. diffusion had taken place before the
"Lucy" craze, in 1947, when the number of TV sets increased from 8,000 to
170,000. Television's raw beginning in Japan occurred in the same year as
television's blossoming in the United States. On February 1, 1953, less than a
year after the Occupation ended, Nihon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) went on the air as a
public service broadcaster--even though only 866 TV sets existed in the Tokyo
area at the time. A few months later, on August 28, 1953, NTV began
transmissions.
*Role of non-commercial television. Japan boasts a strong dual TV system.
NHK's programs pull in respectable ratings--much higher, relative to commercial
stations, than PBS's in the United States. The gargantuan public broadcaster,
which employs 16,000 people, has always had a cosier relation to the government
than PBS does. NHK radio, unabashedly modelled on the BBC when it was
established in l926, became a military propaganda tool during World War II.
Today, although officially independent, NHK is known for "failing to challenge
the powers that be" (Sanger 1993).
*Choice and diversity. Today in Japan, about 25 percent of households have
cable service, compared with more than 62 percent cable penetration in the
United States. The choices in number and foci of channels give U.S. cable a
narrowcasted diversity, whereas the ethnic homogeneity and centralization of
authority in Japan accounts for the fewer broadcasted programs of general
appeal. For 6 million Japanese households, direct broadcast satellite (DBS)
parabolic antennas bring in two 24-hour NHK pay channels, not the array of
choices available with U.S. dishes. Clearly, "the multi-media, multi-channel era
is slow coming in Japan" (Nishino 1994, 116).
*Cross-ownership of print and TV media.E Japanese law officially promotes
media diversity and forbids concentration, but Japan's large, national dailies
have complicated financial links to television that amount to cross-ownership.
NTV and its 27 local affiliates (NNN network) are allied with the Yomiuri
newspaper (1995 a.m. circulation more than 10 million); TBS and its 25
affiliates (the JNN network), with the 4-million-circulation Mainichi newspaper;
and Fuji and its 27 affiliates (the FNN network), with the 2-million-circulation
Sankei newspaper. The smaller Asahi Broadcasting Co., whose 20 affiliates form
the ANN network, is allied with the Asahi newspaper. TV Tokyo, allied with the
Nihon Keizai newspaper, has affiliates in only four cities. No such
relationships--much less centralized newspapers of such--exist in the United
States.
*Social context. In pursuit of the value of harmony, Japan uses television
to project "a picture of what society should be," while "America uses television
like a microscope under which every flaw and problem is closely examined"
(Stronach 1992, 56-57). Harmony and homogeneity, while facilitating the Japanese
economic miracle, can have a dark side; these values can make for reticent,
self-restrained reporters and an insular, and closed-minded audience. To
counteract Japan's geographical and psychological isolation, kokusaika
("internationalization") has "become a sincere goal of Japanese governmental,
cultural and educational leaders" (Wray 1990, 17).
Purpose of the Study
Has kokusaika affected TV content--specifically, Japan's TV news? Or, as
Nakane (1988, 6) puts it, is all the talk of internationalization "a sure
indication that Japan is still a closed society"? Do differences between the two
countries, as noted above, affect news content? Each society, believes van
Wolferen (1993, 11), belongs to "an altogether different frame of reference."
For example, different gender roles exist in East and West (Cooper-Chen, Leung
and Cho). This paper seeks to understand the Japanese and U.S. frames of
reference by examining TV news. To have a basis for comparison, it will look at
how both cover the same "universe" of international news events (Rosengren
1977).
II. RELATED STUDIES
Japan stands nearly alone in East Asia in its isolation from the American
academy. For example, at conferences of the Association for Education in
Journalism and Mass Communication 1990-95, 26 papers focused solely on or
included the mass media of mainland China and Taiwan, but only 11 treated Japan.
Whereas Chinese wrote nearly all of the papers on China, Westerners wrote most
of the papers on Japan. The dearth of Japanese who study mass media in the
United States, the absence of a "publish or perish" ethos at Japanese
universities and other factors mean that "Japanese research has not been as
impressive as Japanese industrial products" (Ito and Tanaka 1992, 28).
However, enough research exists to confirm that the push for
internationalization has had some effect on increasing Japan's TV coverage of
the outside world. Figures over time for "pure" foreign news (no home-country
involvement) at NHK are:
1974 - 5.2% (Shiramizu 1987)
1984 - 9.2% " "
1992 -14.1% (Miller 1994)
Considering Japan's trade-based economy and ranking as the world's No. 2
industrial power, even 14.5% seems low for a public-service network free of
commercial pressures.
U.S.-only TV Studies
By way of comparison, figures for the three U.S. networks' "pure" foreign
news were higher (Gonzenbach, Arant and Stevenson 1991):
1972 - 20%
1982 - 22%
1989 - 24%
Gonzenbach et al. found little difference between the three networks
(ABC, CBS and NBC). During the period studied, the use of foreign correspondents
generally increased as technology made it easier to transmit news from around
the world.
Larson's (1984) earlier study of U.S. evening newscasts from 1972 to 1981
found three overseas regions to be most prominent: Western Europe, mentioned in
30% of stories; the Middle East, in 29.3%; and Asia, in 28.1%. Another 20.2%
mentioned Eastern Europe; 11.1%, Latin Americ; and only 7.2%, Africa. In their
study of foreign news coverage on U.S. network television newscasts, Weaver,
Porter and Evans (1984) reported military/defense, foreign relations, domestic
government /political and crime/ justice/ terrorism as the most common story
topics.
The correspondents sending those foreign reports are likely to be male.
Overall, women comprise about one-fourth of the U.S. overseas media corps
(Kliesch 1991, 9). Similarly, women reported one-fourth of all TV evening news
stories in 1994, but the percentage of women sending reports from overseas is
much lower. In 1994, CBS, the subject of this study, had a higher-than-average
presence of women overall, 29% ("Visibility," 1995, 3). Anchoring, however,
remains a male province. Tom Brokaw, sole anchor at NBC for 12 years, says of
himself, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings, "It seems unlikely to me that, when we
retire, we'll be replaced by three white males" (Briefs, 1995, 9).
Japan-only TV Studies
Possibly because NHK actively funds research, studies of network TV news
content in Japan tend to analyze NHK out of proportion to its audience. Often
one commercial network is compared to NHK, but seldom do researchers leave it
out. For example, Ishikawa and Kambara (1993) found in a study covering March
2-8, 1992, that news/current affairs was 41.8% of 17.5 percent of TBS content.
Similarly, Miller (1994) analyzed 157 stories on NHK and NTV's 30-minute
evening newscasts for a composite week in May and June 1992. NHK reported a
total of 92 stories (excluding daily sport scores and weather reports), while
NTV reported 65 stories. Both the commercial and noncommercial Japanese
networks had the same top four categories ("politics and government,"
"economics, business, finance," "disaster/accident," and "crime"), but the rank
order differs because of NTV's greater emphasis on crime reporting.
The issue of anchor and reporter gender, focus of much U.S. research
since the early 1970s, "may not appear as important in Japan where almost all
newscasts are co-anchored by a female and a male" (Miller 1994, 89). However,
that apparent example of gender equality was belied by the virtual absence of
female reporters: for NHK, males reported 100 percent of all on-location
stories; for NTV, males reported 94.7 percent (only one location story was
female-reported). In a related finding (Saito 1994), heavy TV viewers in Japan
associated the United States with a positive image of gender equality.
In studying internationalization, Miller (1994) found that NTV paid more
attention to "pure" foreign news (15.4% of stories) than NHK (14.1%). NTV had
fewer stories with a foreign dateline than NHK, but more widely distributed
geographical locations: Asia--three stories; United States--three; Western
Europe--four. At NHK, seven of the foreign news stories originated from Asian
countries. Miller (1994, 95) concludes, "In a nation that produces much of the
world's electronic news gathering equipment and has many foreign correspondents,
international reporting is low."
U.S.-Japan Comparative TV Studies
Kodama et al. (1986) studied the same networks as this paper's focus, CBS
in the U.S. and TBS in Japan (as well as NHK) during three weeks in
November-December 1984. The top three news categories and split between domestic
and international news are as follows:
CBS TBS
Politics 16.0% 12.0
Economy 9.3% 9.6
Society 50.3% 42.9
Domestic 58.0% 74.0
Home/int'l 26.8% 7.9
Other nations 15.3% 18.0
E Straubhaar et al.E(l986) analyzed TV newscasts aired June 7-14, l984, in
the United States, Japan and six other countries. They found that 1) the concept
of news and the format of a newscast are consistent across the eight countries;
2) most prominent in all eight were the topics of politics, economics, military
and social issues; 3) except for India, all countries covered industrialized
nations more than any others; and 4) the United StatesEwas by far the most
covered country.E
Analyzing the United States, Japan (NHK) and three other nations'
newscasts for Sept. 1-5, 1986, Cooper-Chen (1992) found that Japan and the
United States had the least congruous "world view" of all the 10 pairs of
nations studied.EOnly violent international events made their way past NHK
gatekeepers:Ea ship collision, a plane crash and a war.ENHK did not even mention
the two biggest stories of that week: the non-aligned summit and protests in
South Africa.
Kodama (1991) noted the total absence of women reporters on NHK. For CBS,
she found a dramatic jump in the number of news items covered by women
reporters, from 8.7% in 1974 to 20.2% in 1984. Comparing anchors required no
high-level analysis. For CBS, Dan Rather, the anchor in 1984, had replaced
Walter Cronkite, the anchor in 1974. For NHK, a male-female anchor team in 1984
replaced a stable of male anchors in 1974.
Research Questions
How do modern Japan and the United States see their place in the world? Do
these perceptions, as interpreted by gatekeepers, coalesce? An analysis of TV
news can permit comparisons between the two superpowers.
1. How prominent is international news vs. the country's own news?
2. Within international news, what geographic areas predominate?
3. What topics/ categories predominate in news content?
4. What news items are included/ excluded when the two cover each other?
5. What is the role of women reporters and anchors?
This study will enlarge upon and provide a needed update of previous
research. Riffe, Lacy, Nagovan and Burkum (1994, 12) emphasize that, in TV news
studies, the "life of research results may not be as long as researchers
suppose," so constant updates are in order.
III. METHOD
Because Riffe et al. (1994) discovered much greater variations month to
month than day to day, they recommend against consecutive-day or
constructed-week samples in TV news research. (Thus previous studies that used
those methods are somewhat suspect.) A random selection of two weekdays a month
proved to be the most efficient way to pull a sample, with additional randomly
selected weekdays increasing the sample's representativeness. This study took
the precaution of randomly selecting five weekdays per month (i.e., a different
set of five days for each of six months).
The 6 p.m. newscasts of TBS were watched on the selected weekdays
January-June 1993. Thus the Japan sample included a total of 30 30-minute
newscasts. Of the three main commercial networks, TBS' newscast had the
advantage of comparability with Kodama et al. (1986) and a simultaneous English
translation (on specially equipped TV sets). For the United States, the 6:30
p.m. (EST) CBS evening newscast, for which abundant previous research exists,
was judged comparable to TBS.
The unit of analysis was the story. Each TBS story was summarized. The
summaries then were compared with stories on CBS newscasts for the day before,
the same day, and the day after, using the Vanderbilt Television News Index and
Abstracts. CBS stories the day before each randomly selected day of TBS news
provided the highest number of stories in common for the two networks, so the
previous day was used consistently for CBS. For example, if January 8 was coded
for TBS, January 7 was coded for CBS.
Categories for coding came from a large study coordinated by the
International Association for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR) at the request
of UNESCO. The project analyzed foreign news in the print and broadcast media of
29 countries for a continuous and constructed week in 1979 (Sreberny-Mohammadi
1984).
Any story reporting events within the home country was coded as "home news
at home" (domestic). Any story reporting events outside Japan on TBS (or the
United States, on CBS) was coded as "home news abroad" in the case of
home-country involvement or "foreign news abroad" for an overseas story with no
Japanese/ U.S. involvement). The location if outside Japan/ the United States
was noted. If a reporter delivered the story, the gender and physical location
of the reporter were recorded.
For both newscasts, 20 topics developed by the IAMCR group were noted for
presence in a story:
1. diplomatic/political activity between states
2. politics within states/ countries/other similar units
3. military/ defense: armed conflict or threat, peace negotiations
4. economic matters: trade, tariffs, imports, exports, output, sales
5. international aid: disaster or famine relief, military, education
6. social services: health, housing, illiteracy, status of women
7. crime, police, judicial, legal and penal
8. culture, arts, archaeology, history, language
9. religion
10. scientific, technical, medical
11. sports
12. entertainment, show business (except personalities)
13. personalitites (not politicians): sports, entertainers, others
14. human interest, odd happenings, animals, sex
15. student matters, education
16. ecology: energy conservation, pollution, other
17. natural diasaters: floods, earthquakes, drought
18. other
19. weather
20 accidents
Rosengren (1974) emphasized the importance of a "universe of events" in
assessing mass media content. By using each other's newscasts as a referent, one
can construct a standard against which to judge coverage, revealing what CBS and
TBS excluded as well as what they included.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
This study of TV news during January - June 1993 compared 309 stories from
30 randomly selected newscasts on TBS (Japan) and 283 stories from 30 newscasts
on CBS (the United States). Included news items for each country were checked
against each other and, further, against a "universe of events" to determine
patterns of exclusion.
The stories were also coded for story type (domestic, foreign, domestic
news abroad, and other), story location, topics and gender of reporter. Two
graduate students coded the TBS stories. A third graduate student recoded two
randomly selected TBS newscasts, for a total of 55 stories. The authors then
used Holsti's (1969) formula to calculate intercoder reliability: 2M
N1 + N2
where M = number of coding decisions on which the two coders agree
and N1 and N2 refer to the total number of decisions by the first and
second coder. Reliability was, for story type, 92.7 percent; for location, 96.4
percent; and topic, 94.5 percent. The third graduate student coded all of the
CBS newscasts.
1. International News Versus Domestic News
Not surprisingly, as Table 1 shows, on both CBS and TBS, domestic stories
dominated the newscasts (69.3% for CBS; 71.8% for TBS). More interestingly, the
foreign news abroad category corroborates earlier findings:
1) Japan (13.9% of stories) continues to make less room for the outside
world on its newscasts than does the United States (20.8%), as Gonzenbach et
al.'s (1991) figures showed when compared with others' Japan research;
2) the U.S. network newshole for overseas stories has remained quite stable
at somewhat over 20% for more than 20 years; and
3) Japan's drive to internationalize, whereby its overseas coverage was
inching up each year, may have reached a plateau (witness this study's decrease
from Miller's 15.4% figure).
Perhaps most interesting of all, Japan seems almost to require a home angle
(home news abroad, 10.7%) to make overseas news palatable to its audience.
2. Dominant Geographic Areas
As Table 2 shows, different "non-home" regions captured the networks'
attention January through June 1993; the Spearman correlation coefficient was
only 0.0062, where 1.0 equals perfect agreement. CBS focused its international
news on Eastern Europe, the Middle East/North Africa, (South) Africa and Western
Europe, in that order. The international news coverage on TBS focused on Asia,
North America, Western Europe and Eastern Europe.
Remarkably absent from Japan's TV "map" were Latin America, Africa and the
Middle East. Exactly matching Miller's (1994) findings, though in a differnt
time frame from this study, both NTV and TBS ran only one story on Africa and
one on Latin America. Television in Japan virtually excludes developing
countries except some in Japan's own Asian region.
3. Topics/Categories in the News
The top story topics for CBS were crime/judicial/legal, politics within
units, and military and defense. The top story topics for TBS were politics
within units, crime/judicial/legal, and economy. The Spearman's rank-order
correlation shows marked agreement, with a coefficient of 0.6539.
These categories for TBS exactly match Miller's (1994) findings for NTV
and in the same order. Miller found a lower profile, however, for sports than
did this study. Science/ medical news has a higher profile in the United States
(where it ranks sixth, ahead of economic news) than in Japan (TBS has a few such
stories; NTV had none).
4. Patterns of Included/Excluded News Items
Judging from Table 4a and b, a telescope spans the Pacific that magnifies
the United States when Japan looks through one end and shrinks Japan when
Americans look through the other, wrong end. TBS (Japan) covered 15 U.S.
stories, while the CBS covered only three stories from Japan. Confirming the
finding in Table 1, gatekeepers apparently believe that Japanese audiences need
a home angle to "swallow" an overseas story. Even in presenting the familiar (to
most Japanese) United States, eight of 15 stories had a home angle, such as the
March 2 interviews with Japanese businessmen who had offices at the bombed-out
New York World Trade Center.
With only three Japan events covered, CBS excluded much important news. A
parallel table showing the events left out would surely include the fall of the
LDP government and the creation of new political parties in June.
Table 4c shows limited agreement in items and emphases in the two
countries' newscasts, considering all that occurred in six months. For U.S.
gatekeepers, the Middle East and Bosnia loomed large, while the Japanese gave
those stories barely a nod. For the Japanese, who had election monitors and
engineers, Cambodia held their attention, but it did not interest the United
States.
A high-profile, limited-duration event in Europe--such as the toddler
murdered by two 10-year-olds in England and Audrey Hepburn's funeral in
Switzerland--had an easier time passing onto the small screen in Japan than
major, continuing stories from Africa (the South African political transition
and the famine/fighting in Somalia) that made U.S. news.
5. Reporter Gender
Table 5 shows the virtual absence of women reporters on TBS. Although that
network had male-female anchor teams for its newscasts, only 10 of 89 reporters
in the sample newscasts were female. Confirming Cooper's (1988) findings based
on 1986 data, women are completely absent as foreign correspondents and nearly
absent as domestic correspondents.
At the time of the study, CBS also had a male-female anchor team of Dan
Rather and Connie Chung. More female reporters got air time at CBS (25.3%) than
at TBS (11.2%). The CBS figure matches the 25% ceiling that others have noted,
while the TBS figure is higher than the 5.5 % of Miller (1994), who used a
different sampling method. More of the TBS stories were read by news anchors,
deemphasizing the enterprise and credibility of on-scene reporting. By contrast,
CBS produced fewer stories, but more of them emanated from reporters.
U.S. women still come up short in terms of overseas assignments. Giselle
Fernandez, who gave one report from Mogadishu, Somalia, and Susan Spencer, who
reported on the one-time Clinton-Yeltsin summit in Vancouver, accounted for only
6% of CBS' foreign coverage (36 reports). By contrast, the 10 men at overseas
posts sent stories consistently (e.g., eight reports by Bob Simon from the
Middle East and former Yugoslavia; four reports by James Hattori from Asia).
Tables 1, 2
table 3
Table 4
FOREIGN STORIES,
CBS and TBS newscasts, January-June 1993
a. TBS stories with U.S. location
Date News item
1/27 *U.S. charges Japan with dumping autos
2/12 *Clinton and Watanabe meet in Washington, DC
" " Japan heart patient in Pittsburgh
" " Clinton confers with attorney general
2/22 *Dollar's fall vs. yen good for Japan's tourists
3/2 *World Trade Center bombing; Japan firms coping
" " Branch Davidian cult standoff in Texas
3/9 Branch Davidian cult standoff in ninth day
" " Woman with terminal cancer finishes LA marathon
4/12 Riot occurs at Lucasville, Ohio, prison
4/16 *Prime Minister Miyazawa in D.C.; has press conference
" " *Sumo champ Akebono visits school in his home state, Hawaii
5/10 *Honda Accords to be built 110% in the United States
5/14 Strategic Defense Initiative killed
6/3 Lung disease in Southwest kills Navajo teens
b. CBS stories with Japan location
2/14 Bargain hunting as Japanese economy turns down
3/8 *Japan likes Chrysler jeep
5/11 Meeting in Tokyo on Minke whales; status of whaling in Japan
c. TBS/CBS stories with other overseas locations
# CBS # TBS
1/7 Oil spill, Shetland Islands 1 1
1/24 Funeral of Audrey Hepburn, Switzerland 1 1
Jan. No-fly zone and bombing, Iraq 2 1
Feb. Toddler murdered by boys, England 1 2
Mar. Threats to Yeltsin's power, Russia 2 1
Mar. UN nuclear inspection denied, N Korea 1 1
5/13 Gunman holds hostages, France 1 1
6/13 Elections, woman prime minister, Canada 1 1
Jan-June Issues re. elections, Cambodia 1 (6/2) 7
Jan-June Mid East peace, Palestinians, Israel 10 1
Jan-June Conflicts in Bosnia 14 1
*=Home news abroad
table 5
V. CONCLUSIONS
Do Japan and the United States each belong to, in the words of van
Wolferen (1993, 11), "an altogether different frame of reference"? Judging from
592 stories on the two nations' newscasts, the answer is partly "no," but mostly
"yes." A different ethos appears to operate among gatekeepers and audiences in
these two modern societies. This study's reliable, month-by-month sampling
method (Riffe et al. 1994) during January-June 1993 lets us make the following
assessments with confidence.
Convergences
Local emphasis-domestic news accounted for about 70% of both countries'
newscasts.
Geographic emphases-Japan and the United States share a mutual interest in
Europe and--to stretch a point--in the United States. And both must plead guilty
to geographic imbalance by virtue of their mutual neglect of South Asia, Latin
America and good portions of Africa, even though both have the technological
resources and overseas opertions to cover whatever news they choose. For
example, both missed the political bombings in India during mid March 1993 that
killed 300 people and the assassination May 1 of Sri Lanka's president and its
consequences.
News values-Both CBS and TBS emphasized crime and politics, while both
deemphasized ecology, culture and social service news.
Divergences
Follow-through-When covering international news, CBS showed a greater
tendency to provide extended coverage. It was rare to see a second mention of a
foreign news story on TBS. CBS was especially thorough in covering the unrest in
Bosnia and the Middle East peace talks from January-June 1993. The only process
story to capture a great deal of attention from TBS, the run-up to the election
in Cambodia, had a strong domestic connection. The sole mention of Latin America
could also qualify as a home news abroad story, as it described a volcanic
eruption, something to which all Japanese can relate.
Clearly, having home-country personnel involved in potentially violent
conflicts overseas brings a story into high relief: Cambodia for the Japanese,
Somalia and Bosnia for the United States. Japan's peace constitution prevents it
in theory from mounting a combat force and engaging in military ventures
overseas, so a high-profile Bosnia and Somalia cannot exist for Japan. Indeed,
the sending of non-combat forces to UN peacekeeping operations in Cambodia
represented the first post-war venture of this kind for Japan. Still, South
Africa's political transition and the Middle East peace process did not involve
U.S. personnel, but U.S. coverage continued anyway.
Insularity-Japan's kokusaika ("internationalization") efforts remain
largely a myth in terms of news, given the low proportion (13.9%) of "pure"
international news on TBS (compared with 20.8% for CBS). Japan has virtually no
immigrant links with the rest of the world, as does the multicultural United
States (but it has emigrant links with second- and third-generation Japanese
Americans). Modern Japan "constitutes what may be the world's most perfect
nation-state: a clear-cut geographical unit containing almost all the people of
a distinctive culture and language and virtually no one else" (Reischauer l981,
8).
Miller (1994 p.100) explains TV's insularity in terms of the high level of
newspaper readership in Japan, which "means the broadcast networks leave
international reporting to the print media." For this and other reasons,
domestic minutiae in Japan often swamp important overseas stories. The ya-gamo
("arrow duck") saga is a case in point.
In a park in Tokyo, a reporter spotted a duck that someone had shot with
an arrow that pierced the duck in such a way that it missed vital organs and
spared the duck's life; it was even able to fly. As officials tried to capture
the duck, the story grew bigger and bigger, often leading the national news. On
Feb. 12, 1993, one of the days randomly selected for this study, the duck was
captured and the arrow successfully extracted. TBS lead its national newscast
with a five-minute report of the incident, including models of the duck, x-rays
of the arrow and two on-location reporters.
Coverage of the advancing cherry blossom front from south to north as
part of the news from February to June each spring may strike some foreigners as
minutiae overkill and others as ultrnationalism, given the long association of
sakura with the Japanese spirit. The first pink blossoms in the Japanese
archipelago appear in Okinawa. In late March, the first trees that bloom in
Tokyo attract not only weather-report coverage, but on-location reporting within
the main news as well. Indeed, reporters stake out likely early bloomers so as
not to miss the grand opening. Coverage ends for the season in May when, for one
glorious week, the sakura trees sport full bloom on the northern island of
Hokkaido.
Gender roles-Hofstede (1984) explored cross-cultural differences in
thinking and social action by surveying 116,000 employees of a large
multinational corporation in 1968 and 1972. On his Masculinity Index, Japan
ranked highest of the 40 countries studied, with a 95 score. By contrast, the
United States scored a middle-range 62, while Norway (8) and Sweden (5) scored
lowest. In high masculinity cultures, women and men occupy different places; few
women hold professional and technical jobs, and they tend to be segregated from
men in higher education (Hofstede 1984, p. 177).
The moderate success of women on CBS (25.3% of reports) and near absence
of women at TBS reflect Hofstede's findings of U.S.-Japan differences. In the
world of Japanese television, woman's place remains in the studio, not out
reporting the news. This study found that TBS had only 10 stories covered by a
female reporter (one of them the arrow-duck story). TBS still abides by the
separate, unequal spheres for men and women that Japanese society ordains.
Shortly after this study's time period, on July 18, 1993, the Liberal
Democratic Party lost the majority in Japan's Diet that it had held for 40
years. In 1994, the government changed again. Then on Jan. 17, 1995, more than
5,000 people died when a 7.2-level earthquake hit Kobe; the government rescue
response was criticized for its inadequacy and slowness. Will these cataclysms
change Japanese society? Future research could track the effect of such changes
on newscasts.
Is Japan, in fact, modern but not Western? Has foreign news reached a
plateau of about 15%, as the United States seems to have reached a level of
somewhat over 20%? Determinants of foreign coverage have been studied for
Western nations (Rosengren 1977; Shoemaker, Danielian and Brendlinger 1991;
Adams 1986). More research specifically related to Japan could explain factors
affecting its limited foreign coverage.
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