THE

EMERGING INVESTIGATIVEJOURNALISM MOVEMENT
IN

JAPAN AND ASIA
Edited by

Tatsuro Hanada and Makoto Watanabe

Contents
Published by
Waseda Chronicle
Waseda Chronicle is an independent nonprofit newsroom based inTokyo, working for sustainable investigative journalism.
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Waseda Chronicle is a member of Global Investigative Journalism
Network (GIJN).

Foreword

1 Investigative journalism paving the way
6

HANADA Tatsuro
Introduction

2 Reconnecting journalism and civil society:
The “ism” in search of a home
22

HANADA TatsuroPart I: Investigative Journalism Movement in Theory and Praxis

3 The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa:
The Removal of Accumulated Evils in the Press and the constructionof a democratic media system, walking that long road together
40

JUNG Sooyoung

4 The Reporter of Taiwan:
The development of civil society, the social movement of media reform,
and the birth of nonprofit investigative journalism
LIN I-hsuan

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5 The Asahi Shimbun’s foiled foray into watchdog journalism
Martin Fackler

Part II is the outcome of a symposium held in Tokyo in cooperation
with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

6 Waseda Chronicle in Japan:
A short history from its founding journalist
WATANABE Makoto

This publication is supported by grants from Act Beyond Trust (abt),
an independent civil society fund based in Japan.

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7 The creation of space surrounding the public:
The mode of struggle adopted by social activism
and investigative journalism
TANAKA Hiroshi

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8 The public sphere, antagonism, and journalism
Supported by the Waseda University Institute for Journalism.

HANADA Tatsuro168

Part II: International Symposium on Investigative Journalism
in Tokyo and After

9 Responding to the recommendations of the United Nations Special
Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression,
David Kaye, addressed to Japanese journalists:
Symposium opening address
HANADA Tatsuro

192

10 GIJN invite you to join us
Alessia Cerantola

196

11 Japan’s experience with investigative journalism:
Panel discussion 1
YORIMITSU Taka’aki, KUMADA Yasunobu, ISHIMARU Jiro, Martin Fackler,
Moderator: Steven Butler

199

12 New models to sustain investigative journalism in Asia:
Panel discussion 2
KIM Yongjin, Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza, Sherry Lee, WATANABE Makoto,Moderator: Kathleen Carroll
224

13 Isn’t it a journalist’s duty to unite to protect press freedom and provide
support to threatened colleagues?:
Symposium closing remarks
Joel Simon

250

14 Overseas compatriots over the native Masukomi:
Reflections after the symposium
WATANABE Makoto

254

15 Looking back on the symposium with six points
Steven Butler
Acknowledgments
Editors and Contributors

261

Foreword

Investigative Journalism Paving the Way

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

Investigative Journalism Paving the Way

The aim and structure of this book
What sort of journalism is meant by the term “investigative journalism”?
It is a movement of self-innovation attempting to escape the stagnation of journalism that has occurred over the 20th century to create
new watchdog journalism for the 21st. Its key characteristic is that it isa movement by journalists as the main constituents and participants
within journalism—as individuals—as opposed to a campaign carriedout by media organizations, companies, or industries. Furthermore, it
is a decentralized movement unfolding on a global scale. The various
locales where journalists have begun to innovate are each a center ofthe movement.
Of course, the U. S. is a significant presence in terms of the scale ofits movement. The investigative journalism movement began in the U. S.
toward the end of the 20th century, but it only gathered momentum
after the 2008 financial crisis. The media industry declined as advertisers withdrew their sponsorship from newspapers and broadcasters
due to the severe economic recession, resulting in many journalists losing their jobs. Furthermore, investigative journalism, which takes timeand money, was no longer a priority for financially struggling newsrooms. Some journalists left the mass media in pursuit of their passion
and started online, nonprofit news organizations. Fortunately, in the
U. S., many major foundations support nonprofit news organizations,as well as numerous wealthy individuals who are happy to offer funds.
For example, ProPublica, founded in 2007, was able to succeed thanks
to these conditions. Of course, one must give credit to the accomplishments of Mr. Charles Lewis as an individual for leading this movement

under the principles of a nonprofit. After all, it was he who founded The
Center for Public Integrity in 1989 and then, in 1997, went on to foundthe International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which
would later achieve fame for its publication of the Panama Papers. Mr.
Lewis was previously a producer for the CBS documentary program 60
Minutes but, feeling limited by that role, he left it to pursue innovative
investigative journalism.
However, the U. S. is not the center of this movement. In Asia, thefrontrunner within this field is the Philippine Center for Investigative
Journalism (PCIJ), founded in 1989. Because it published in English, it
received recognition and high praise from investigative journalists in
the U. S.
Then, in the 2010s, new, smaller activities began springing up unnoticed throughout other countries in East Asia. Now they have taken
clear and visible shapes to be recognized by us as an interconnectedphenomenon. In 2012, Newstapa borrowed one meeting room from a
trade union to take its first, quiet step in South Korea. The Reporter
emerged in Taiwan in 2015. In 2017, Waseda Chronicle was founded inJapan. All are online nonprofit news organizations whose central mission is investigative journalism. And they share a further commonality.
Newstapa and The Reporter publish in the language of their respective countries; if they have an English site, it is a complementary addition. Moreover, in general, they do not depend on foreign foundations
or donations for their funding but instead collect it from sources within
their nation. This inward positioning demonstrates the fact that circumstances within their respective countries sharply define their formation. These news organizations have come about as a result of forces
entirely unrelated to trends within the U. S. They were not merely stimulated by the success of ProPublica. Waseda Chronicle wanted to catch
up with these forerunners in neighboring countries.
Why have these investigative news organizations, which at firstglance seem to share a core commonality, come to emerge from various
countries across East Asia? What is happening there? Where are theyheaded? This book tackles these questions.

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7

HANADA Tatsuro

1. Current trends in investigative journalism in Asia:

Investigative Journalism Paving the Way

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

We aim with this book to intervene in the situation. “Situation” here
refers to the broader social situation, including journalism and the
media. “Intervention” refers not merely to observing the situation, nor
criticizing it, but instead to participating in the situation, entering into
it to understand it, attempting to change it together from within, andfinally taking responsibility for its outcome.
In this book, “intervention” is undertaken in two ways. Part I“Defining the rise of investigative journalism in Asia—Its history, present
conditions, and prospects” is a collection of six essays. They will achieve“intervention” through employing the analytical method to observe, understand, explain, and interpret the situation to indicate its prospects.
The articles by Ms. JUNG Soo-young, Ms. LIN I-hsuan, Mr. Watanabe
Makoto, and Mr. TANAKA Hiroshi were written exclusively for thisbook. Mr. Martin Fackler’s article has been previously published, while
HANADA’s article is also a reprinting of a previously published work.
JUNG’s essay covers Newstapa, while LIN’s covers The Reporter and
Watanabe’s covers Waseda Chronicle. Each explores the circumstances
behind the foundation of their respective news organizations and analyzes their current conditions and objectives. These essays highlightvast differences hidden beneath the similarities mentioned above, revealing the distinct conditions and details that led to the creation ofeach organization, as well as their varied strategies to be sustainable.
They reflect the differences in the historical, political, social, and media
environments unique to each country, with particular regard to the different characteristics and dynamics of civil society within those nations.
From this emerges the question of locales within movements.
Universal ideas or principles are by themselves merely abstract concepts that hold no bearing upon reality. It is only by finding such specificlocales, wherein these ideas might thaw, activate, and power into motion, that they gain any meaning. However, it is probably more realistic
to describe the matter from the other end. That is to say; when thoseaffected by a situation create some specific locale, their hands can reachout to grab hold of those universal ideas or principles. From there, they
add their interpretations to such ideas, making them their own.

Mr. Fackler’s essay is especially critical as a work that focuses on exploring the context that lies behind the formation of Waseda Chronicle
in Japan. Almost no other English document offers such a detailed account—and analysis—of the 2014 controversy surrounding the Asahi
Shimbun’s retraction of its article on the Fukushima nuclear disaster andthe “Yoshida testimony”; thus, it more than deserves to be publishedwithin this collection. Mr. Fackler has mastered Japanese, Chinese, andHangul on top of his native English, making him incredibly valuable asboth an outside body and a participatory observer to the situation in
East Asia.
TANAKA’s essay uses the philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s concept of the“production of space” to analyze the relationship between journalism
and social movements, discussing the meaning of investigative journalism therein. HANADA’s essay—moved to the Introduction in this English
publication—will surely provide a broader perspective on the situation
with its general take on the current conditions and prospects of investigative journalism by focusing on the relocation of journalism’s “home.”
HANADA’s additional essay, located at the end of Part I, interprets investigative journalism from the viewpoint of journalistic antagonism, analyzing the structure of KUROSAWA Akira’s film “Seven Samurai.”
Our second method of achieving “intervention in the situation” wasthrough the hosting of an international symposium that we hoped
would act as a fulcrum for change. Part II of the book, “International
Symposium on Investigative Journalism,” is a record of said event. Its
contents not only serve as a record of the past but possess the power torestructure the present situation. Let us now look at how that symposium came about.

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2. Why hold an international symposium:

Freedom of the press within Japan under international scrutiny
On June 4, 2017, the international symposium “New Models to Sustain
Investigative Journalism in Asia” was held in the Ibuka Masaru Memorial
Hall, International Conference Centre, Waseda University, Tokyo. It was
jointly hosted by the Waseda University Institute for Journalism and theInvestigative Journalism Paving the Way

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), with support from the Waseda
University Comprehensive Research Organization and the Global
Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN).
Under what circumstances and for what reasons was this symposium
held? Looking back, 2016, the year leading up to the event, was a critical one for Japanese journalism. It was made remarkable by a specificunusual event. The Japanese media, which had built up its closed world
akin to a state of national isolation or the Galapagos Islands, was priedopen, peered into, and observed from the outside, bringing its bizarreness under scrutiny. That year, it became apparent that the situation
within Japan was not beyond the interest of the world at large and could
no longer be permitted to exist as some self-contained domestic issue.
International society would not disinterestedly neglect the situation in
Japan.
On April 4, 2016, media around the world had simultaneously
started to report on the Panama Papers, published by the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Amid all this, the United
Nations Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, Professor David Kaye, arrived at Narita Airport on the 11th ofthat month. Initially, his visit to Japan had been scheduled for Decemberof the previous year, but a last-minute cancellation by the Japanese
government had pushed it back. While this delayed visit to Japan was
finally being realized, the world was in an uproar over reportage on the
Panama Papers.
Mr. Kaye was industrious in carrying out his research interviews. He
shared the provisional results of this research a day before he departed
from Japan, at a press conference on the 19th. He cited various issues
within the Japanese media, including problems within the press club
system, the government exerting pressure on the media through the Act
on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, and statements madeby Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications TAKA’ICHI Sanae,such as her statement in February 2016 suggesting the possibility thatthe ministry could legally order a station to cease broadcasting by citinga violation of the Broadcast Act Article 4 if they judged the station tolack political objectivity. Ultimately, Mr. Kaye warned that the independence of the press was under severe threat. The following day, the 20th,
the international NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published their2016 global press freedom index. Japan ranked 72nd, further regressing
from its previous year’s position as 61st, becoming the lowest-ranked
among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
countries.
Japan’s established media, called Masukomi in Japanese, reported
these two events with an attitude that seemed to see it as somebody
else’s problem as opposed to one’s own affair. Their reporting showeda stance suggesting that this was a problem exclusive to the government. The press freedom index indicates the level of the government’s
transparency, such as disclosure of administrative information, which
is itself a representation of the relationship between the government
and the media. However, this issue does not belong to the government
alone, since, if the media were functioning as a watchdog to power, government transparency would also increase as a result. Japan coming in
72nd place is not merely indicative of the facts that the Japanese government does not have much respect for press freedom and that there
is little transparency within the government. The ranking undoubtedly
indicates that the coverage provided by the Japanese media has little
ability to monitor power. The Japanese Masukomi showed almost noawareness or repentance for the latter. Indeed, they did not realize thatthey were being addressed. As such, though there was a certain amountof reporting around both Mr. Kaye’s report and the press freedom index,
the media and the people who work therein did not confront the reality of their situation as their own affair. So nothing changed despite thecoverage. It just sped by like an express train past a local-line station.
However, it is an undeniable fact that there are significant questions
around the independence of the Japanese media, that it is in a bizarre
situation regarding freedom of the press. The world now knows how
Japanese journalists are failing to fight under a system of self-censorshipand sontaku (speculative consideration for the will of social superiors).
It is safe to say that, today, the opinion that Japan seems slightly odd or10

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Investigative Journalism Paving the Way

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

different regarding matters such as human rights or freedoms is spreading around the world. These circumstances must be our starting point.
Moreover, the world did not neglect our situation. It was not indifferent. In June of that year, I met Mr. Joel Simon, Executive Director of
the CPJ, in Tokyo. Mr. Kaye introduced him to me. I had met Mr. Kaye
twice during his visit, and we discussed various matters concerningjournalism in Japan. Mr. Simon had heard of this from Mr. Kaye. Aftertalking things through with Mr. Simon, we decided to hold an international symposium for investigative journalism here in Tokyo. Both heand I had concluded that we had to do something. Why an international
symposium? What sort of event was it? Part II of this book documents
the answer.

Starting from Japan’s positive potential
What concepts should the international symposium be based upon?
During the planning stages, I ascertained the following points.
Journalists from the U. S., facing high pressure under the Trump administration, should be in attendance to interact with Japanese journalists.
Instead of the conventional angle focused on criticizing the Japanese
media, it should identify the positive achievements and possibilities
of Japanese journalism, while making connections towards a perspective that might pave the way forward. Investigative news organizations
should be invited from countries around Asia to exchange opinions,share their experiences, and create a cooperative relationship. These
were the three key points.
I first met the CPJ’s Asia Program Coordinator, Steven Butler, in Tokyo,
in July 2016; we met again in September. We discussed the symposium,
its content, composition, and selection of speakers. He was always on
the move throughout Asia and seemed incredibly busy: in New York last
week, India and Pakistan this week. Even so, we exchanged frequentemails, continuing the planning process.
Ultimately, the symposium developed a two-part structure. Part one,titled “Experiences of investigative journalism in Japan,” would identify

the positive achievements made in Japan while also revealing the issues
and challenges therein. We decided to introduce the working methods
and their achievements, as seen in the Asahi Shimbun, NHK, and Asia
Press International, to discuss the challenges facing them. At that point,
we also wanted to ask Mr. Martin Fackler to participate as an objective observer of the Japanese press. In part two, “New models to sustain
investigative journalism in Asia,” news organizations from four different countries would be presented together to exchange opinions about
each of their models and methods while exploring the possibility of future cooperation. It felt important that both parts should cover topics
that might energize Japanese journalism to bounce back from negative
trends.
So, what are those positive achievements and potentials within
Japan? One lies within the established media, like newspapers or television, and its potential as a watchdog (monitor of power). Whether highor low, it has some potential that might be measured by the quantity,
quality, and social impact of the work (the extent to which the coverage can change society). The established media has abundant resources:
workforce, money, and time. It is an undeniable fact that this has produced some great work. Surely, one can find hope in that. The questionis whether those great works are permanent elements or exceptions
within the established media.
There are also “independent journalists” (a more exclusive, more robust concept than “freelance journalists”) who operate autonomously
outside that established media, and one can find positive achievements
and possibilities therein. Within the Japanese infosphere, dominatedby the established media, being an “independent” presents difficulties
both in terms of finance and public reach; however, one must not forget those journalists who have shown something different from the established media through their firm determination and ingenuity. The
investigative journalism movement may have a lot to learn from the efforts of these minority figures.
The symposium at Waseda University was paired with the “Freedomof the press and protection of journalists” symposium held at Sophia

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3. The concept behind the symposium:

Investigative Journalism Paving the Way

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

University two days earlier, on June 2, with both involving the CPJ. On topof this, Mr. Kaye, who had just submitted his final report on the freedomof opinion and expression within Japan to The United Nations Human
Rights Council, held a press conference before that symposium, which
I attended. The Japanese Masukomi attempted to and indeed did framethat press conference as “the Japanese government versus David Kaye,”
yet it seemed to me that the crux of the issue lay elsewhere. What Mr.
Kaye and the CPJ were concerned about was the present state of journalists in Japan: the fact that they were not doing much to fight for freedomof the press or media independence, and that this problem remained
invisible and unseen. By placing excessive emphasis on “the Japanese
government versus David Kaye,” the Japanese Masukomi obscured thefact that Mr. Kaye was questioning their independence, that they, themedia organizations and the journalists, were themselves recipients forhis recommendations. In that case, where are we to find the bearers ofjournalism as an “ism,” where are we to find any genuinely concerned
parties? Is Japan unique in this respect? In other words, Japan exhibits
a media environment that has developed through a Galapagos-like caseof isolated evolution.
The CPJ has worked to protect journalists in countries or regions thatsuppress free speech and murder or imprison journalists. Previously,
Japan would not have seemed the sort of country that the CPJ might
focus on. However, Mr. Kaye’s investigations must have caused the
CPJ to realize that Japan, too, though in a different form, is a country
wherein the freedom of the press is under threat, and journalists areforced to face bizarre difficulties. Therefore, it is a place that requires
the CPJ’s attention. Additionally, the malfunction of the watchdog function within Japan is an important issue that impacts Asia as a whole.

Collaboration with the Masukomi is an illusion
That’s how the international symposium documented here came about,and the results of which can be seen in this book. Circumstances havecontinued to shift after the event, and we have made difficult decisions

at every turn, progressing through each choice. The results of the symposium have served us well during these occasions. Now, I will describe
our current standings, over a year after the event took place.
The sentiment that I felt after the symposium, which involved journalists from the U. S., South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan,
is that although we were working towards a common goal as journalists—acting as a watchdog to power—our methods, philosophies, andstrategies were as varied as they were contrasting. It showed how theconditions within our respective fields of battle, our countries were different. First of all, even though we all generally monitor our respective
governments, the Japanese government and the American government
are different in various ways. Even though we are both in competition against the established media, the Japanese Masukomi and theAmerican mainstream media are different. This is the same between
Japan and South Korea or between Japan and Taiwan. I learned that if
the opponents are different, then the strategies must be changed too.
According to a journalist from the Associated Press who took part in
the symposium, in the U. S. the established mainstream media and thisnew wave of investigative journalism are in a relatively good relationship, creating conditions that allow for complementary relationships
and collaborations. I, too, once studied those conditions in the U. S., aswell as the methodology of the German nonprofit news organization
CORRECTIV, and thought their collaboration with the established media
was, similarly, an essential step for investigative news organizations
within Japan. Indeed, there was a time when I began preparations withthat as my goal. In Japan, our partner would be Masukomi. Specifically,
our national and regional newspapers, alongside NHK and commercial
TV broadcasters. As presented in part one of the symposium, Masukomi
in Japan does also hold a record of excellent investigative reporting.
However, upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that, unfortunately, such investigative reporting is by no means the norm, but rather
the excellent work of a marginalized minority. Trailblazers are, by definition, the minority, and, in Japan, they can never come to control thecore of an organization or move the masses. Trailblazers within the

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4. Creating an alternative arena to the Masukomi:

Investigative Journalism Paving the Way

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

Masukomi are eventually defanged. As such, they will never come tochange the Masukomi’s values or culture.
What I came to understand as I groped for a solution was that, for thetime being, there is no possibility of a collaboration with the Japanese
Masukomi. I did not reach this conclusion through inaction. It is knowledge I have gained through numerous bitter experiences of betting upon
the slimmest chances, placing my hopes in them, only to see every constructive effort ultimately turn to dust. Japan is not the U. S. or Germany;hence the conditions are entirely different and, therefore, attempting totranspose a model that had succeeded in other countries onto Japan isfundamentally futile (contrary to my previous mistaken beliefs). I had
no choice but to take this simple fact as my starting point. I realizedthat I needed to stop believing in a naive illusion and start from thestark reality. One must leave such illusions behind in order to take thenext step. What I mean by an illusion is, in other words, an “assumption.”
This is often accompanied by “attachment.” Both the terms “assumption”
and “attachment” are frequently preceded by the descriptor “arbitrary.”
As such, they are one’s responsibility; one alone can rouse one’s self fromtheir depths. That is to say, one can only move forward by determining the situation, in reaching a judgment about every element, to settle
matters. If one intends to move forward, not to retreat, then this is the
only way.
One year on from its foundation, Waseda Chronicle graduated fromits status as a Waseda University Institute for Journalism project and, inFebruary 2018, became an independent nonprofit organization. During
this process, Waseda Chronicle chose not to identify itself as a media
outlet but as a journalism nonprofit. That is to say, it decided to form
and occupy an arena removed from the established media. However,frankly, one could call it a category separate from not only the established media but even from the American ProPublica or the German
CORRECTIV. As such, Waseda Chronicle will no longer compete with
the Japanese established media, Masukomi, nor will it ever enter a complementary relationship with them. The fact that we have reached thispoint, where we can take such a unique stance, is a testament to theTaking the fight to a global arena
What should we do to move forward? A hint about this question lies
within the international symposium’s discussion on “new models to sustain investigative journalism in Asia.” It was a rare opportunity to haveinvestigative news organizations from four Asian countries gathered together. Indeed, one could say that this was the most significant aspectof that event. These news organizations, each of which had emerged
under different conditions and for different reasons, are linked by theirshared pursuit of the values of investigative journalism. Their activities
are both one cornerstone of a global movement and a variety of individual local operations within the Asian region. Though there were differences within the local contexts of each activity, it was recognized thatno national boundaries could exist for an investigative journalist. One
could feel a sense of natural solidarity among these journalists—a rareexperience in Japan, I might add.
During our preparations, we talked over which news organizations toinvite. Mr. Butler brought up South Korea’s Newstapa and the Philippines’
Rappler, while I brought up Taiwan’s The Reporter. We ultimately settled on inviting all three using funding from the CPJ and the Institutefor Journalism. Waseda Chronicle rounded out the group. Having begun
publications earlier that year, Waseda Chronicle was the youngest of the
four. The other organizations were not much older, with each having
been founded sometime in the 2010s. Each organization sought a newform of journalism to change society and the world, aimed to realize
this through investigative journalism, and was putting this into practiceby utilizing new technologies, the internet, social media, and design. In
each of our respective countries, the established media had reached anadvanced level of development, cementing them as a significant industry. As a result, they had necessarily come to encroach upon the power
structures and market economy which had, at the same time, come to16

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course we’ve charted after that international symposium, and it is theresult of us learning from our situation.
5. The nonprofit news organizations of Asia gathering together:Investigative Journalism Paving the Way

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

absorb them. As a result, they could no longer fulfill their journalistic
function as a watchdog. Under such circumstances, the foundation of
any new news organization is invariably driven by a need or desire to dosomething different from the established media.
Due to this backdrop, the funding for these operations must also be
different from the established media. The solution is direct support fromcitizens: in other words, donations. It is different from advertisements(dependence upon the advertisers) or subscription fees (payments forthe product). This discovery, seeking funding via donations, represents
the ability to support journalism by principles that are fundamentallydifferent from those of the 20th century’s mass media era. The 20th century has come to an end, and the 21st century has begun. We must makeour way through this harsh yet hopeful transitionary period in pursuitof independence, free from intervention by any entity. However, whatshould we do if this donation model becomes but an illusion when applied to Japan? We have bet on the hope that it will not prove an illusion.
It, in effect, means betting on the potential of Japanese civil society.
When we held the symposium, Waseda Chronicle had just submitted a membership application to the Global Investigative Journalism
Network (GIJN) and was still waiting for the result. During the symposium, I also recommended to Ms. Sherry Lee from Taiwan’s The
Reporter that her organization do the same, and I introduced her tothe GIJN’s Executive Director, Mr. David Kaplan, via email. Things progressed smoothly, and we were both accepted as members of the GIJN
at the end of that month.
While maintaining communications after the symposium, we met
again in November 2017 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Waseda Chronicle and The Reporter were both participating in the 10th Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC) to speak at various sessions.
At the Asia Session, in particular, both organizations received a warm
welcome as new member organizations. Furthermore, at another session, editor-in-chief Mr. WATANABE Makoto’s presentation on Waseda
Chronicle’s series “Journalism for Sale” received thunderous applauseand praise. Thus, Waseda Chronicle made its debut and was welcomed

I would like to express my gratitude to the Waseda University
Comprehensive Research Organization, which granted us subsidies tohost the symposium.
We have also burdened the editor of this book, Ms. DEGUCHI Ayako,
with a great deal of trouble, and I would like to say that having her fightby our side has been a great help to all of us here at the editorial board.

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on the global stage.
This way is our best option. This is the site where we should raise ourbanner. That was doubtless what every member of Waseda Chronicle
thought in Johannesburg, including me. This was not some arbitrary
conviction held by us alone. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan(FCCJ) acknowledged and affirmed that conviction and our methods by
awarding the “2017 FCCJ Freedom of the Press Awards, Supporter of theFree Press” to Waseda Chronicle’s editor-in-chief Mr. WATANABE Makoto
and myself. To be honest, I was surprised at the speed with which they
had reached this decision to acknowledge our entry into the Japanese
media environment by granting us an award. Even though those in andconnected with the Japanese Masukomi might ignore us, might not recognize our work, we have found direct supporters within civil society
and loyal colleagues among the journalists of the world.
I am indebted to many people for the success of our international
symposium and the publication of this book.
I would like to extend my thanks to the authors, who contributed
their best works to the essay segment in Part I, and their transla tors.
Furthermore, for the international symposium segment in Part II,
I would like to express special thanks to the following people (honorifics redacted):
Joel Simon (CPJ), Steven Butler (CPJ), David Kaye (University ofCalifornia, Irvine), Martin Fackler (journalist), David Kaplan (GIJN),
Alessia Cerantola (GIJN), NAGAI Mariko (interpreter), IKEUCHI Hisaro(interpreter), IWASAKI Mamiko (stenographer), those people who
helped set up and manage the venue.

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

I would like to give my heartfelt gratitude to a truly inspirational ally.
I would also like to express my thanks to the publisher Sairyusha.

Initially, this essay appeared in Japanese in the book Tansa-journalism/Chousahoudou 探査ジャーナリズム/調査報道 (Investigative Journalism: Nonprofit News
Organizations Emerging in Asia), Tokyo: Sairyusha, 2018, 4–18.
TEZUKA Mafuyu translated this essay into English, and the author and Annelise
Giseburt edited the translation.

Introduction

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Reconnecting Journalism and Civil Society

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Reconnecting Journalism and Civil Society

1. Kaye’s report and the isolated evolution of Japan’s Masukomi
Although David Kaye submitted his report1 on the Japanese media to
the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in June 2017, ourscrutiny of the field cannot end there. Kaye visited Japan as a special
rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of
opinion and expression, an independent expert appointed by UNHRC.
Much like a clinician, he examined press freedom in Japan throughobservation and inquiry to deliver a diagnosis. His criteria were basedon the International Bill of Human Rights, which Japan has, of course,
ratified. Indeed, Japan is currently a member of the Human Rights
Council’s board.
The Japanese government under Prime Minister ABE Shinzo first
responded to Kaye’s diagnosis by dismissing its importance at a press
conference, where Chief Cabinet Secretary SUGA Yoshihide stated that
it was just “a report made within the capacity of the rapporteur as anindividual” (failing to comprehend the meaning of independence freefrom external influence). Suga then tried to disqualify Kaye’s abilities asa legal expert by claiming that “large parts [of the report] are based on
verbal evidence or assumptions,” and thus, “the report contains an inaccurate and insufficient reflection of the situation within Japan.” This
attitude is akin to a patient hurling abuse at their doctor because theyreceived a diagnosis of poor health. It can only be described as an immature attitude lacking both the spirit of the international communityand decent manners. Threats to freedom of expression are present inevery country, and a democratic government should listen to the observations offered by a professor of law appointed by the UN.
The central recommendation in Kaye’s report urges the “independence of the media.” Concerning the government, the report recommended that Article 4 of the Broadcasting Act (Editing standards forbroadcast programs) should be reviewed and abolished and that an independent institution to regulate broadcasting should be introduced,
thus strengthening the independence of broadcasting as a whole. In
other words, Kaye recommended that Japan cut off any potential forpolitical intervention into the freedom of expression, remove any elements that might threaten it, and establish a transparent system that
better guarantees that right.
This is something that scholars and experts in Japan have been saying for decades. Had the government listened to those suggestions earlier, it would not have felt the need to fall back on an overly aggressive
attitude against some perceived “foreign pressure.” Still, “independence”
is neither appreciated nor understood within this country, especiallynot by the government.
Incidentally, that recommendation is not reserved for the government
alone. The mainstream media’s independence is similarly shaky. Indeed,
the report recommends that media organizations “should publicly express their rejection of any form of threat or intimidation against journalists or other professionals carrying out investigative reporting work.”
They should also remain vigilant against any form of direct or indirectpressure on their editorial activities, in particular by guaranteeing full

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The “ism” in search of a home
HANADA Tatsuro

Journalism is an “ism.” It is a recognition of specific values, an idea, anda moral practice. This “ism” requires a vehicle, a vessel, a stage—in otherwords, a medium. During the 20th century, that medium was the mass
media: newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Thus, journalism
and the mass media have been roped together like two parts of one set.
However, that 20th-century model has come to an end. That partnership has now dissolved, and journalism has separated from the established media to embark upon a journey in search of a new home. It has
broken free from conventional relationships turned shackles to begin amovement of innovation. Where will it go?

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support and protection to journalists investigating and commenting oncontroversial topics. Issues are such as protests against military activity
in Okinawa, the impact of nuclear activities and disasters, and Japan’srole in World War II (precisely issues surrounding comfort women). In
other words, investigative journalists doing work related to these issues
do not receive adequate protection. Did the president of the NHK, thepresidents of newspaper companies, or any of their ilk realize that thiscall for action was addressed to themselves? There was no sign of it.
Finally, Kaye’s report also included a recommendation for journalists. In short, he recommended that journalists across the field meet toreview the impact of the press club system, with a focus on promoting
transparency, and consider creating an association of professionals to
promote independent reporting. In other words, create a professionalorganization by and for journalists that takes a stand to protect independent reporting. Of the three recommendations, this seems the least
realistic because, unlike the previous two, the main body being called
upon here is almost non-existent.
Kaye himself is well aware of this. At a press conference in Tokyo,
he pointed out that Japanese journalists appear to prioritize loyalty totheir company and lack a sense of solidarity with their journalistic colleagues or loyalty to the principles of journalism. The distinctive feature of the Japanese “masukomi” (the established mass media) may befound therein. Threats to freedom of speech from the government andeven from major media organizations themselves is a familiar story
around the world. However, within Japan’s “masukomi ”—formed likea Galapagos, isolated from the world—the principles of the company
reign supreme. The company automatically acts as a system to inhibit
freedom of expression before any apparent intervention from the government. In this environment, journalists who value craft above company will never emerge en masse. Sontaku (guessing one’s superiors’
wishes and acting on them) within media organizations and self-censorship in the name of self-control is erasure and renouncement of theidentity and autonomy of their journalists.
In truth, this distinctly Japanese threat to freedom of expression is

2. The “ism” and its home
In preparation for the discussion ahead, we must first clearly differentiate journalism and the media. I use the word masukomi to indicate theconflation of the two, as they exist in reality, and the word finds extensive
usage in the media industry as well as the general public. Furthermore,terms such as “corporate journalism,” “organizational journalism,” and“press club media” also refer to this conflation.
As stated earlier, the word “journalism” asserts itself as an “ism.” It isa recognition of specific values, an idea, and a moral practice. It is oneof the “isms” born from the modern age. Its values are rooted in the continuous publishing of the products of observations on the contemporary
world for the public, acting in the interest of civil society (as opposedto the state) to monitor the actions of authorities that might oppress
civilian freedoms (fundamental human rights). Journalism is referred
to as a watchdog in the West and has been called zaiya (outside government) in Japan.
In order for this “ism” to perform its social function, it requires a vehicle, a vessel, a stage—in other words, a medium. This medium wasonce the small-scale press, but with developments in media technology
at the turn of the 20th century, that role fell to the mass media (newspapers and magazines with a large circulation, radio, and television). The
mass media expanded as an industry, a business, and a system throughout the 20th century to become a significant presence in society. Since
it was always a medium for channeling information, it could distribute any sorts of information: news, weather reports, stock evaluations,
opinion pieces, literature, education, entertainment, advertisements,
promotions, or propaganda.

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the absence of any journalistic movement fighting for that freedom.
This point is not only an issue of the absence of professional unity.
It is an issue of where to find the bearers, practitioners, and participants of journalism as an “ism.” Keeping this notion in mind, let us
now look at what is currently happening to journalism in Japan and theworld at large.

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For journalism, the mass media was a vital tool to reach the public.
For the mass media, journalism was a convenient banner that offeredlegitimacy. So, the 20th-century model, where the two were merged intoa single set, was born. By absorbing journalism’s function as a watchdog, the mass media attained legitimacy. Thus, began the notion thatthe media monitors power. However, tools and vehicles are not merely
used—they also influence their users. The tool becomes a constraint.
Journalism’s function as a watchdog could no longer be free from thelogic of mass media.
The established media-technology enabled communicators to take amonopolistic position over recipients, providing one-way communication from the sender to “a large number of unspecified individuals,” inother words, a mass media audience. However, a new emerging technology for the transfer of information would come to destroy this conventional structure, breaking that monopoly. The era of mass media isapproaching its end.
The advent of the internet made us realize that the 20th-century
model of mass media and journalism had become mythologized. The
mass media is often referred to as merely “The Media” (with capital letters) or “the mainstream media” concerning journalism. Although weare often told that the essence of the mainstream media lies in its role
as a watchdog, this is, in fact, far from the truth. Instead, this reputation is merely makeup to beautify reality. The cosmetic front that has
attained mythic status. While we can indeed cite examples of some significant achievements in monitoring power, like the Watergate scandal
or the Pentagon Papers, they are a small minority of exceptional cases,
canonized as legends indeed because they are the exceptions. Although
this might seem somewhat harsh, or maybe oversimplified, it’s possible
to see the supposed monitoring of power professed by the mainstream,
established media as the extraordinary achievements of a small minority of journalists, whose successes provide the remaining majority with
fuel for smug self-satisfaction. Putting on proud airs under the bannerof a watchdog to power, without ever actually performing those duties,
is nothing if not smug self-satisfaction. In truth, the established media

certainly does not, and perhaps never did, offer favorable conditions forthe “ism” to function in full force.
Once freed from the myth of the 20th-century model deemed statusquo, the “ism” can dissolve its relationship with the 20th-century media
and embark upon a journey in search of a new home. The mass media
will likely remain as an efficient system for the collection, processing,and transmission of information. However, journalism will no longer
look to the mass media for its home, or at least not to mass media alone.
The “ism” is being reborn as it searches for a new home.

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3. Innovation through investigative journalism
Outside Japan, journalists themselves, not the media, instigate innovation when journalism stagnates. With the advent of the 21st century,
especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, investigative journalism and data journalism movements began to take shape around theworld, adopting strategies that utilized a nonprofit financial model andan online platform. These were journalists attempting to perform investigative journalism, no longer possible within the mainstream media,
in another place through a different form of funding. The most notableinstance of this phenomenon within the U. S. is ProPublica, founded in2007. In Asia, we have the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism(PCIJ), founded in 1989, South Korea’s Korea Center for Investigative
Journalism (KCIJ) Newstapa, founded in 2012, and Taiwan’s The Reporter,
founded in 2015. These are all nonprofit organizations. However, theirfunding models do vary, differing in response to the specific political,
economic, and cultural conditions in their respective countries. Thereis also an international organization made up of such nonprofit, investigative newsrooms, the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN),
established in 2004.2
Why did this phenomenon occur for investigative journalism? What
are its core qualities? First and foremost, investigative journalism isdifferent from breaking news coverage. A large part of breaking news
coverage is based on processing and transmitting the daily deluge of
information that comes from various authorities via press conferences

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and press releases. There is an owner, a producer, or a provider of theoriginal information (communicators), and reporters receive their information from these sources. Although reporters collect and processthat information, their actual function is little more than that of a meditator relaying received information to the public. Thus, the relationshipis centered around an initial communicator, followed by their mediator (reporters). Much of the news is produced through this relationship,
wherein media outlets compete to become the fastest transmitter. Thisis only one form of reporting, though likely considered the mainstream
in Japan. The alternative is in-depth reporting. In Taiwan, this term has
been translated into the Chinese characters 深度報導 (deep-level reporting), an apt word for investigative journalism. Within in-depth reporting, the journalists themselves are the communicators.
It is difficult to translate the term “investigative journalism” into
Japanese. For now, the most widely used term is 調査報道 (chousa houdou) as customized within the Japanese media industry. However,
調査 (chousa) usually means “research” rather than “investigation.” If itmeans “research,” it should be called research journalism. Within theprocess of reporting, research involves necessary fact-finding, dealing with documents, data, or statistics. By contrast, an investigation isabout delving into the unknown, the mysterious, which is hidden andsteeped in secrecy. Thus, it will approach the truth through exploration and pursuit to expose the facts found therein. It is not “to look up”
but “to investigate.”
So, what subject merits such an investigation? Power. Investigations
aim to find and expose wrongdoing concealed by various political, economic, and social powers; in other words, instances of abuse, corruption, disorder, or omission.
Why is that necessary? The misuse of power invariably produces
victims and casualties. It is necessary to save those people, to improveand reform the world. It is by staying true to this method that investigative journalism attempts to reclaim the noble path of monitoring
power. In inspecting a range of recent journalistic works, I have noticed
that “bringing justice to victims and casualties of power” seems to be a

4. Waseda Chronicle as a trigger for innovation
Here, I would like to expand upon a project in which I myself have committed. On March 11, 2016, just on the day five years after the Great EastJapan Earthquake and the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, a project
team was formed within the Waseda University Institute for Journalism.
This initiative became the Waseda Investigative Journalism Project.
Some journalists involved in the institute planned on starting a media
outlet specializing in investigative journalism, and they wanted to use
university facilities. After the initial preparatory period, they began online publication on February 1, 2017, with their first series, “Journalism
for Sale,” published under the name Waseda Chronicle.
What could this signify? Having followed international trends, I felt
that, at long last, Japan was seeing its own set of journalists who would,
with the aid of experts such as designers and video producers, escape
our Galapagos to join the global movement. Practitioners of the “ism”
were emerging here in Japan, and the innovation of investigative journalism had begun. It may succeed, it may fail, but we will never know
until we try; this is the nature of every project.
Why should this occur at a university? I believe that universities
are places of innovation. Innovation is not limited to technology. It is28

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passion shared by these journalists. Their coverage begins with returning to this central call, which provides the foundation for the fruits of
their labor, stories. This attitude is not quite the same as merely “standing by the socially vulnerable.” It is more argumentative and confrontational in the face of power. In a sense, it aims to fight against power, tosettle each case with the truth as its weapon, to end injustice, to savevictims, and in so doing, win that fight.
The many efforts to enact this ethos around the world stand atop a
redefinition of the mission to monitoring power, simultaneously developing the content of their investigative journalism, media applications
to enhance expression, financial models, and more. As alternatives tothe established media, the road ahead depends on their potential forsustainable development. The “ism” has found its new home here.

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taken for granted in the natural sciences that new theories contributeto technological innovation. At the same time, we in the humanities
should attempt the innovation of knowledge and social systems as well.
Universities are an appropriate place for this.
Today, journalism in Japan must confront some crucial questions:
Does Japanese society need journalism? If it does, then what content,
mission, and format would fulfill that need? How would its work befunded? Is civil society prepared to shoulder those expenses? To answer
such queries, one cannot stop at mere contemplation but must experiment in the real world. To this end, a model for the production of investigative journalism by an online, namely nonprofit news organization,
was designed, developed, and launched. The organization contained
the further practical benefit of providing a perfect place for journalism
students to put their training into practice.
It is an experiment to test the viability of this model within the various conditions of Japanese society, examining how said society reacts
to the model. In that sense, Waseda Chronicle is like a probe being
launched into a vast space of power, or like a research vessel setting
sail out into an ocean, below whose surface swim a menagerie of monsters, the Leviathan and its ilk, which live by enslaving then eating their
human prey.
Waseda Chronicle’s first piece of investigative journalism was a series
entitled “Journalism for Sale,” which exposed compensated articles (notdeclared as such) about prescription medication, for which advertising is strictly regulated. The series revealed how money had changed
hands between pharmaceutical companies, advertising giant Dentsu,
and Kyodo News, a news wire whose coverage was then published inregional newspapers. These practices are unacceptable, especially regarding medicine, an actual matter of life and death. Waseda Chronicle
reported on this topic so that people could be alerted to the fact thatpatients in need of proper medication might have suffered as a resultof this scheme. Our aim was not to cause a scandal in the press but tobring justice to potential victims.
So, what is Waseda Chronicle’s financial model like? We started a

crowdfunding campaign simultaneously with the release of the first“Journalism for Sale” article to see whether journalism could be supported through crowdfunding. Set to run for four months, from the beginning of February until the end of May 2017, with a target figure of
3.5 million yen (about $32,000), this target was reached in just 19 days.
By its conclusion, 346 donors had contributed 5.52 million yen (about$50,000). Many of these donors left messages on the crowdfunding site:
words of hope and support from ordinary people, which seemed to embody the heartfelt encouragement of civil society.
Our other source of funding is a membership system for supporters to make regular donations, starting at 1,000 yen (about $9) per
month. This way is based on the model used by South Korea’s Newstapa.
Although their membership fluctuates, as of the time of writing, theirsite lists the organization as having 38,858 contributing members.
However, Newstapa is the only journalism nonprofit in the world tosucceed through this format, which leaves little room for optimism regarding Japan’s potential to provide such success. However, this, too, issomething we cannot confirm without experimentation.

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5. Nonprofit journalism
Let us start by discussing the immediate phenomena. We have noticed
an increase in the amount of mainstream news citing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and nonprofit organizations (NPOs) as theirinformation source. For example, The Asahi Shimbun recently ran theheadline, “NGO reports four Japanese companies were investing in cluster munition producers, the highest among regulated countries” (May24, 2017 morning issue). Cluster munitions are an indiscriminate widearea lethal weapon, while unexploded shells function similarly to landmines. With many casualties being civilians and children, cluster munitions are widely considered to be inhumane. Through efforts madeby the Norwegian government and the Cluster Munition Coalition, aninternational network of nonprofits working in around 100 countries,
an international convention banning the use, production, and trade ofcluster munitions was created and ratified in 2008. Japan was among

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the nations that signed the convention that year. However, this news
article stated that 166 financial institutions around the world, four ofwhich were Japanese, have lent or invested $31 billion to six cluster
munitions producers in the past four years. The four institutions werenamed—and shamed—with details on the amount financed by each
institution. Who unearthed these facts? It was not The Asahi Shimbun
or foreign media, but the article credited its information to an international NGO called PAX, headquartered in the Netherlands. A PAX representative held a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Clubof Japan to announce these findings.
What is the structural relationship within this case? The mainstream
media receives information from NGOs, which are the ones performing investigative “journalism.” Shouldn’t the mainstream media havecarried out this investigation? Today, NGOs and NPOs are improving
their ability to present, investigate, and communicate issues—mostly,
they are doing what the mainstream media has stopped doing. In otherwords, the monitoring of power is no longer a duty exclusive to professional journalists and the mainstream media; NGOs and NPOs have also
become leading players within that field.
This is ironic, given that the media, in its original alliance with civilsociety, held an ideological affinity to NGOs and NPOs. However, theseterms themselves were yet to come about. However, over the 20th century, media organizations increasingly sided with governments andwith profit. Now, the monitoring of power, what might be called thejournalistic function, is borne by NGOs and NPOs. Of course, not allNGOs and NPOs adequately fulfill this function. More than a few havebecome mere subcontractors for the government, and their situation is
not that different from the media.
In his keynote speech for a symposium held at Waseda University in
May 2017, journalist and scholar Mark Lee Hunter discussed the increasing influence of NGOs and NPOs using the term “stakeholder-driven
media.”3 He focused on social relationships in which a community withsome specific shared interest owns their media, which transmits information to their community, forming and maintaining the community

through that process; media have significant power in this relationship. The influence of this “stakeholder-driven media,” as opposed tothe mainstream media, can explain phenomena like the rise of France’s
extreme right-wing party Front National (now National Rally) and theelection of U. S. President Donald Trump. Or the achievements of international environmental NGO Greenpeace and the French medical site
Prescrire.org. In other words, stakeholder-driven media occurs irrespective of political allegiance, left or right.
By this definition, the Waseda Chronicle might also be considered
an example of stakeholder-driven media. Although Waseda Chronicle’s
journalism is aimed at the general public, the organization is not backed
by the public at large. Indeed, it might qualify as a media outlet attached
to a “community with some specific shared interest” in that its stakeholders recognize the value of investigative journalism as a watchdog
and provide the organization with money and moral support. So, just as
there are environmental NGOs, human rights NGOs, and medical NGOs,
Waseda Chronicle is a journalism NGO.
In Japan, the Abe administration has effectively developed a system for monitoring journalists and civil society with the Act on theProtection of Specially Designated Secrets, security-related bills, andan “anti-conspiracy” amendment to the Organized Crime Punishment
Act. This set of three laws, of course, also applies to civil society actors
like NGOs and NPOs. Those who attempt to monitor power are a danger
in the eyes of the state. Combined with former CIA employee Edward
Snowden’s revelation that the U. S.’s National Security Agency has sharedwith Japan a program called XKeyscore, these three laws are none otherthan a fast track to a mass-surveillance society. The XKeyscore can create vast databases detailing the daily life of any individual through wiretapping and surveillance.4
What does it mean to monitor power under these circumstances?
It is a struggle between the monitoring of power by civil society andthe monitoring of citizens by a nation-state: We monitor them as they
monitor us. Though we might use the same word, “monitor,” the two instances differ in implication. From the standpoint of civil society, where32

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a watchdog monitors the misdeeds of power, surveillance monitors thegood deeds of citizens. This relationship is both qualitatively and quantitatively asymmetric and unbalanced. It is under these circumstancesthat we must redefine the social and cultural practice of journalism
to liberate the watchdog function from established media alone. Thisfunction must be redistributed equally across the many actors of civilsociety, thus expanding journalism as an “ism.”
Power does not only refer to the prime minister, the administration,or the government. Power is omnipresent in political, economic, andsocial fields. It is everywhere. Indeed, power encompasses more thanjust the visible powers manifested in persons or positions, but also theinvisible powers that function within political, economic, and social systems. Examples include institutionalized discrimination and patriarchal society. Even today, all around the world, including in Japan, somepeople are enslaved through these visible and invisible powers. Slavery
is neither a thing of the past nor foreign. In Japan, we often hear of company employees who commit suicide due to overwork; what is that if
not slavery? Society will never see real reform or improvement until weare aware of the reality of power. The first step is to acknowledge its
actual operation.
6. Journalism education and the task going forward
Education cannot remain detached from the process of journalism as
an “ism” finding a home and redefining itself to expand the scope of its
duties and practice. The movement will inevitably tie into the field of
education. For some time now, inadequacies within journalism schools
have been a talking point in the world, prompting discussion on whatjournalism education should look like in five or ten years. For instance,
in 2014, an international conference held at Ryerson University inToronto, Canada, entitled “Toward 2020: New Directions in Journalism
Education”5 saw over 100 journalism educators assembled from Canada,
the U. S., Europe, Australia, and elsewhere. What started this debate?
Journalism schools are yet another institution striving to stay afloat
amid the waves of innovation sweeping the industry. These discussions

will likely demand not only a redefining of journalism but also a redefining of the journalist.
Until now, journalism schools have operated based on the 20th-century model conflating journalism and the mass media to provide preparatory education for students seeking employment in the mass media.
However, these days, the reality is that many of those who receive thispreparatory education do not or simply cannot get a job in the mass
media. Indeed, statistics show that fewer and fewer journalism school
graduates are working in media, with some graduating only to be left
unemployed. There is an ever-expanding gap between education programs and general societal demand for the kind of practitioners they
produce.
What could have caused this discrepancy? The accepted assumption is that journalism school faculty are only familiar with the legacy
media of a previous century and are unable to offer ideas, curriculums,
or didactic methods attuned to the still-evolving environment of the
21st century. Their young students (prospective employees) graduate without the skills or knowledge needed to drive innovation in thecurrent media environment, thus losing their competitive edge within
the employment market. The continuation of such pedagogy would betantamount to reproducing the negative legacy of the last century. Thisphenomenon can happen in any field when innovation is in demand.
What is the solution? Journalism schools must respond to the environment’s new needs and innovations to raise a new generation of journalists who can collect the necessary resources to produce their crafteven outside of an organization. Schools must advocate a vision of selfsufficiency: the journalist as a proactive individual who delivers independent reporting by simultaneously securing the necessary assistance,technology, and funding while building a stable relationship with theirsupporter base alongside a collaborative alliance with fellow journalists and other organizations. This mode could be called “entrepreneur
journalism.”
The critical issue then becomes: For whom is this journalism being
produced? Who are the partners of this new model of journalism?

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It must not be a mass of unspecified individuals—in other words, thegeneral public—as seen in the 20th-century model, nor the kind of passive group generally referred to as readers, listeners, or audience. The“audience” of this new journalism is comprised of not mere recipients or
targets of education and enlightenment. Instead, “audience” takes theform of a partnership with a collective of various deliberately participating individuals, a community that places value in journalism.
Educating journalists equipped with such a mindset and skills is thetask going forward.
7. The role of the university as a public good
We have examined how journalism, whose mission lies in monitoring
power as a representative of civil society, has been dissolved from its
relationship with the mass media. Journalism has moved away from theestablished mass media, thereby beginning a process of regeneration.
We looked at nonprofit news organizations specializing in investigative journalism and other NGOs and NPOs as journalism’s new homes.
In these organizations, the word “journalist” indicates a practitioner of
the “ism.” The word does not mean merely an employee of a media organization more. Many such practitioners now exist outside the mass
media. To take this a step further, we could suggest the university asa third home.
Journalism and modern academia were both born of modernity.
Both are based on the critical observation of phenomena and events,
a process they have protected through insistence on freedom and independence, qualities under threat from power. For power sees critical observation as a danger to itself. Once the current movement injournalism is recognized as reassembly of the frameworks that define
the practice of monitoring power, expanding toward universalization,
the university could become a substantial base, a place to practice the“ism.” This notion is undoubtedly an opportunity to spread and develop
skepticism toward power and the practices of observing, recording, andmonitoring power within education and research as an accepted academic discipline acknowledged by civil society. It might indeed be what36

we require from the university as a public good: the university becoming
a home for journalism as an “ism.”
In that sense, Waseda Chronicle has a twofold significance, being ajournalistic organization incubated at a university and therefore holding those possibilities mentioned above. Although Waseda Chronicle
later became independent from the university, in the beginning, practicing the “ism” of monitoring power, we published expressions of the“ism” from within its asylum against interference from the state andauthorities.
Universities are a space guaranteeing free discourse and debate andwhich take pride in the independent and anti-authoritarian nature ofscholarship. This modality can lead the journalism to greater heights.
There has been much lamentation over the increasing theatricality ofpolitics. Shall we respond by making the university into another typeof theatre, a theatre for civil society? The university should become thecore of cultural innovation, as a media for cultural practices and as acentral intersection of cultural traffic, in partnership with civil society.

Notes
1. David Kaye, 2017, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of
the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Human Rights Now website.
http://hrn.or.jp/wpHN/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/A_HRC_35_22_Add.1_
AUV.pdf
2. As to the expansion of such global trends, the author wrote, before publishing this essay, the following articles in Japanese:
HANADA Tatsuro, 2016, “Why investigative reporting today in Japan?: The
connection between journalism and global civil society” (なぜいま日本で調査報
道か ― ジャーナリズムとグローバル市民社会の接続). In Tatsuro Hanada, Minako
Beppu, Kazumi Ootsuka, David Kaplan (eds.), Challenge of Investigative Journalism: Civil Society and International Strategies for Support (調査報道ジャーナ
リズムの挑戦 ― 市民社会と国際支援戦略), Tokyo: Junpousha, pp. 12–46.
HANADA Tatsuro, 2017, “The worldwide tide of investigative journalism:
Struggle for the legitimacy of journalism” (ワセダクロニクと調査報道ジャーナリ
ズムの世界的潮流 ― ジャーナリズムの正当性を求める闘い). In Makoto Watanabe,37

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Tatsuro Hanada, Waseda Chronicle (eds.), Start-up! Investigative Journalism:
Good By, Company-Madia! (始動！ 調査報道ジャーナリズム ―「会社」メディアよ、
さようなら). Tokyo: Sairyusha, pp. 23–54.
3. Cf. Mark Lee Hunter, Luk N. Van Wassenhove, and Maria Besiou, Power isEverywhere: How stakeholder-driven media build the future of watchdog news,
2017.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321316410_Power_is_Everywhere_
How_stakeholder-driven_media_build_the_future_of_watchdog_news
4. Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S.
Surveillance State, Metropolitan Books, 2014.
5. Gene Allen, Stephanie Craft, Christopher Waddell & Mary Lynn Young (eds.),
Toward 2020: New Directions in Journalism Education, Ryerson Journalism
Research Centre, 2015.

Initially, this essay appeared in Japanese as the following publication:“Reconnecting Journalism and Civil Society: The “ism” in Search of a Home,”
ジャーナリズムと市民社会の再接続. Sekai 世界 No. 899 (September 2017): 45–55.

Part I
Investigative Journalism Movementin Theory and Praxis

And then reprinted in the Japanese book:Tansa-journalism/Chousa-houdou 探査ジャーナリズム／調査報道 (Investigative
Journalism: Nonprofit News organizations Emerging in Asia), Tokyo: Sairyusha,
2018, 155–173.
TEZUKA Mafuyu translated this essay into English, and the author and Annelise
Giseburt edited the translation.

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The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism
Newstapa

The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

In the winter of 2016, South Korean citizens gathered in Gwanghwamun
Square1 to demand the impeachment of the president.2 In the spring of
2017, the so-called Candlelight Will achieved this impeachment of thepresident,3 and thus, an early presidential election,4 in which they chosethe candidate Moon Jae-in as their nineteenth president. This is known
as the Candlelight Democracy, or the Candlelight Revolution, which managed to topple a regime. A single vital objective that had surfaced in
the midst of this Candlelight Democracy was the so-called Removal of
Accumulated Evils. Indeed, it is also this Removal of Accumulated Evils
which is viewed as the most important among the Moon Jae-in administration’s 100 Policy Tasks.
Accumulated evils refer to harmful influences like negative practices
or bad habits, scandals, and corruption, that have built up over theyears. In order to deal with these deep-rooted evils, the entire nation,from individuals and organizations to society as a whole, must undergoreform and make an active effort to move forward, with proper punishment and repentance for those personally involved or responsible. The
Candlelight Will and their demands for the removal of those evils are directed at the Lee Myung-bak administration (February 2008–February2013) and the Park Geun-hye administration (February 2013–March2017). They demand a thorough investigation into the various policies
and practices put in place by these administrations, to root out thosemistakes and bad habits which have been building up within various
sectors of society, so that they might be removed for good. It should
be noted that removing accumulated evils in the press is counted

amongst both the Candlelight Will and the Moon Jae-in administration’s
Policy Tasks.
It was one piece of news reported in 2016 that triggered the start of
the Candlelight Democracy.5 In July of that year, the generalist programming channel (henceforth, generalist channel) 6 TV Chosun, and in September of the same year, The Hankyoreh, reported suspicions that Choi
Soon-sil, the supposed shadowy mastermind behind president Park
Geun-hye, was monopolizing state power. In October of the same year,
another generalist channel, JTBC, managed to acquire Mrs. Choi’s tablet PC, and broadcast that piece of evidence as a scoop. Thus, the true
extent of the so-called “Park Geun-hye–Choi Soon-sil Gate” became evermore apparent. Most of South Korea’s media outlets, newspapers andbroadcasters, as well as the Internet, rushed to report related news. In
particular, the president of JTBC’s news department and the main anchor to its flagship newscast JTBC Newsroom, Sohn Suk-hee, is credited
as the key player 7 who established the Candlelight Democracy throughhis scoops and incisive reporting around Park Geun-hye–Choi Soon-sil
Gate. It was an event that demonstrated the immense power of journalism, as well as its ideal role as a watchdog contributing to the maintenance and development of democracy.
Nevertheless, the press also faced fierce criticism, for its accumulated evils, within Gwanghwamun Square. Why? What and who exactly
are those marked out as evils in need of removal? Of the many media
outlets engaged in research and reportage within Gwanghwamun
Square, the Korean Broadcasting System (henceforth, KBS) and the
Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (henceforth, MBC), both publicbroadcasters, weren’t welcomed. Many KBS and MBC journalists toldof how they’d had their requests for reports or interviews denied. Then,on the 4th of September, 2017, the KBS and MBC trade unions declareda strike, demanding the Removal of Accumulated Evils in the Press. The
strikes called for the resignation of those managers appointed by thePark Geun-hye administration,8 such as the directors and presidents inboth public broadcasters. A rapid succession of declarations in supportof these trade union strikes rose from civil society. This came from a

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The Removal of Accumulated Evils in the Press and theconstruction of a democratic media system, walking
that long road together
JUNG Sooyoung

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

recognition of the fact that, over the past nine years, the regulations
and self-censorship, enacted under managers sent by the government,
had greatly damaged political independence and autonomy on thefield. In other words, the reformation of public broadcaster lies at theheart of these discussions calling for the Removal of Accumulated Evils
in the Press.
So, would replacing the management at the KBS and MBC mean
the successful reform of public broadcaster? Would that remove thoseAccumulated Evils? To answer this question, it is necessary to begin bydeveloping a deeper understanding of South Korean journalism. One
must then analyze the root cause and core essence of the people’s rage,
their rebuke of the media, and where the fault for that lies. This paper
will discuss these issues in three broad sections:First, to consider the problems hidden in South Korean journalism,with a central focus on the media coverage around the MV Sewol, whichsunk in 2014. The accident, also known as the Sewol Ferry Disaster, wasan unprecedented incident that drove South Korean society into a stateof shock. The media coverage at the time is still criticized as the socalled the Sewol Ferry Press Coverage Disaster, and it effectively caused
the slur, “Giraegi”,9 to spread as a common label for journalists. So, what
was the problem? The various seminars and debates regarding the reporting around MV Sewol deemed the problems surrounding the whole
coverage to be an issue with their disaster reporting, presenting proposals such as the assembly of a disaster reporting system or the training ofjournalists specialized in disaster reporting. However, strictly speaking,one could consider the phenomenon to be a result of the irresponsible,
unethical/immoral journalistic methods and organization culture that
had been building up over the years, finally reaching their limit andexploding (Jung 2015). Hence, the Sewol Ferry Press Coverage Disastermight be described as a symbolic case that demonstrated the reality of
those negative practices embedded within South Korean journalism,that is to say, Accumulated Evils in the Press.
Second, to consider the history of civilian involvement and solidarity within South Korean journalism. In 2014, when the MV Sewol sunk,the ordinary people, who felt disillusioned and enraged by the mainstream media coverage, proactively turned to JTBC, alternative Internet
media, blogs or foreign media in search of the truth about the Sewol
Ferry Disaster. One such media outlet they frequented was The Korea
Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa (henceforth, Newstapa).
Newstapa began publications on the 27th of January 2012, with a staff
list centered around broadcast journalists fired during the Lee Myungbak administration and others who resigned of their own accord. They
are an alternative online media outlet, championing non-profit investigative journalism. In order to be free of any external pressures or interference, they reject all advertisements and funding from government/interest groups, running exclusively on donations from supporter members.10 In other words, civil society and ordinary people are behind therise of non-profit investigative journalism within South Korean society
and the success of those economic models like Newstapa. Furthermore,
therein lies a history of their involvement and solidarity, built upon
their experience of small but steady breakthroughs alongside continual
trial-and-error.
Third, to consider investigative journalism within the context ofSouth Korean journalism, and the implications that Newstapa holds. As
the popular opinion in support of the KBS and MBC strikes grew, a documentary film planned and produced by Newstapa, Criminal Conspiracy(공범자들 – Gongbomjadul), was garnering attention. Criminal Conspiracy
opened in cinemas around the country in August 2017 as the second film aimed at the general public to be planned and produced byNewstapa, following their documentary film released in October 2016,
Spy Nation (자백 – Jaback).11 Both these films were directed by Program
Director (henceforth, PD) Choi Seung-ho, who was dismissed from
the MBC for his involvement with a network strike in 2012.12 Its production costs were covered by regular donations and the story funding
provided by ordinary citizens.13 The film, Criminal Conspiracy delves
into the truth behind how the government has been controlling publicbroadcasters, the KBS and MBC, as well as the identity of those accomplices who aided them. This will be expanded upon later, but Newstapa

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and their film, Criminal Conspiracy stood at the forefront of those battle lines drawn around: The Resignation of the Management in bothPublic Broadcasters – The Reform of Public Service Broadcasting – The
Removal of Accumulated Evils in the Press.
Incidentally, why would the Candlelight Will, which expresses anger at
the public broadcasters for their accumulated evils in need of removal,
trust Newstapa and offer it donations? What are the hopes and desires
lying at the heart of their support? This paper intends to answer thatquestion in its conclusion, based on the various achievements and limitations made apparent through the three discussions above and seeks
to consider the task going forward.

The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

the same year, five organizations, the Korean Newspapers Association,
the Korean Broadcasters Association, the Korean Newspaper andBroadcasting Editors Association, the Journalists Association of Korea,
and the Korean Press Ethics Commission announced their collectively
established The Disaster Reporting Rules. Despite this, the numerous
problems that became apparent through the coverage around the MV
Sewol continue to occur as always, and the Candlelight Will is still seeking the Removal of Accumulated Evils in the Press.
2) The roots and nature of those Accumulated Evils in the Press

As stated above, the Sewol Ferry Press Coverage Disaster is a symbolic
event that allows for the investigation of negative practices rooted inSouth Korean journalism. It’s important to note that the Sewol Ferry
Press Coverage Disaster is not an issue caused by the peculiarity of alarge-scale disaster. It is the result of the media lacking all awarenessor consideration for the roles and responsibilities of journalism, compounded by an irresponsible system of research and reporting attaining generality as a mundane part of journalism culture (Jung 2015). To
highlight and analyze three negative practices that have been built up
within South Korean journalism, let us examine: 1) Dictated Journalism,2) The endless competition in pursuit of commercialism, 3) A lack ofautonomy in the field.

1. South Korean journalism, what are its problems?
1) The Sewol Ferry Press Coverage DisasterOn the 16th of April 2014, the lives of 304 people sunk along with the MV
Sewol. Various media outlets around South Korea formed special report teams and entered a cycle of constant updates. However, the issues
that really required reporting went almost unreported. The families ofthe missing victims strongly sought reports of the truth, complainingthat the news coverage did not accurately represent the reality at theaccident site. However, the major media outlets turned a blind eye totheir demands. Numerous false reports emerged one after the otherto spread a slew of “Maybe Journalism” that overissued unconfirmed
information from unknown sources. There were endless accusationsof skewered facts and faked situations. Most major media outlets suffered severe backlash; South Korea’s Key National Broadcaster as well
as Chief Disaster Reporting Network, the KBS, was no exception. Many
citizens rejected the news coverage by major media outlets, searchingfor specific Internet news sites and reports from foreign media. It was
as if they were News Refugees.
As anger against the media coverage grew, some media outlets andjournalists issued public apologies. Four days from the start of the incident, on the 20th of April, the Journalists Association of Korea announced
The MV Sewol Disaster Reporting Guidelines. On the 16th of September ofDictated journalism – The closed, exclusive and monopolistic natureof the press corps/press room
During the Sewol ferry disaster, much of the media just reported what
was announced by the government and the maritime police headquarters. They did not question the content of these announcements nor
did they perform the most minimal of fact checks. They did not relay
the perspectives or voices of victims or their bereaved families, but only
the stance and opinion of the government or administrative authorities. And, misinformation was mass manufactured. This was so-called“Dictated Journalism”. Dictated Journalism is the South Korean equivalent to the Japanese phrase, “Announcement Journalism”. It is a term

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The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

aspects, such as preventing needless competition or allowing for the efficient acquisition and transfer of public information, it is also thought
to have caused the collusive relationship between journalists andtheir news/information sources as well as the creation of insular andexclusive cartel structures that monopolize information (Kim 2004).
The Roh Moo-hyun administration (February 2003–February 2008)
did attempt to amend the harmful influence of those press corps/press
rooms with a policy called The Advance a Support System for News
Coverage but was unable to achieve these goals due to strong objections from major media outlets, which insisted that the policy was an
attack on press freedom.15

criticizing the passive/inactive news media system whereby journalists
do not proactively take the initiative in digging up issues to report, butare, instead, invited into a government or administration run a press release or an event organized by some company, to just write down whatever they’re told.
The main news/information sources within Dictated Journalism arepublic figures, organizations, institutions and the like. Given its convenience as a report, the reliability of its data, information networks, andthe reporter deployment system, news media’s dependence upon public figures, organizations, and institutions could be considered a global
practice (Shoemaker & Reese 1996), not a problem exclusive to South
Korean media. Indeed, utilizing the authorities’ official announcements,
with regard to the scene of the sinking MV Sewol, could be considered
an appropriate rule for coverage that might’ve stemmed the spreadof a groundless rumor. However, this becomes an issue when one neglects the process of questioning or even confirming the information
provided by public figures, organizations, and institutions, thereby prioritizing their reasoning and opinions. It raises the likelihood of falling
into a Herd-Like unified/collective mentality, prone to the regulationof information and the manipulation of public opinion (Fujita 2010).
Furthermore, this also enables journalists and the media to simply pass
the blame onto the government or those public information sources if
misinformation occurs due to their dependence upon public figures, organizations, and institutions as news/information sources.
Dictated Journalism within South Korea is mainly caused by thepassive/inactive news media system centered around press corps andpress rooms. The South Korean press corps/press rooms are importation of the Japanese Press Club System (記者クラブ – Kisya Kurabu).
It began in the 1920s, during colonial rule, when Korean journalists at
The Chosun Ilbo, The Dong-a Ilbo, and The Sidae Ilbo founded organizations for journalistic movements, such as The Anonymous Meeting (무명회 – Moomyoenghoe) or The Iron Pen club (철필구락부 – Cheolpilgulackbu),
as well as press groups modeled after the Japanese Press Clubs that involved government agencies (Kim 2001). While this did have positive

The endless competition in pursuit of commercialism –Sensationalism and a policy of prioritizing the newsflash
Roughly two hours after the MV Sewol started sinking, almost all media
outlets, except the JTBC, were racing to report the news flash “All rescued”: a false report, the result of parroting unconfirmed informationfrom unknown sources. Even after the other media outlets had issued
correctional reports, the KBS continued to spread the false report of“All Rescued”, actively undermining its own position as a public broadcaster and the chief disaster reporting network. While at the MBC, ajournalist stationed in the Mockpo area, the region closest to the accident site, had alerted the Seoul desk to the possibility of a false report
but was simply ignored. The false report of “All Rescued” threw that rescue work at the accident site into a state of chaotic confusion, leading
to the worst result without a single survivor rescued. Still, a variety offalse reports kept coming. This was the consequence of a media system
wherein journalists are hounded by relentless competition and deadlines, forced to work with the speed at the expense of pursuing the accuracy through proper fact checks and the consideration of context. This
endless competition in pursuit of commercialism had driven them to a
“State of Collective Journalism”14 with all those journalists addressing
the same issues or perspectives as one collective herd, resulting in a
“Torrential-Downpour of Heated Coverage”15 that greatly infringed upon

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The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

The lack of autonomy in the field – “Editorial Rights”
and the internal freedom of the press
However important the issue or individual, if they are excluded or minimized during the gatekeeping process, this removes even the slightest
opportunity for any public debate about them. Thus, the symbolic erasure of issues or individuals occurs. Hence, the news can be described
as a source of knowledge and power (Tuchman 1978, 1981). In the coverage around the MV Sewol, the voices of bereaved families demandinga search for the truth, as well as those issues needed to mount such aninvestigation into the legal/moral culpability of the Blue House or thegovernment and their administrative authorities, were either excluded
or minimized. In their place, there was a selection of sensational issues
diluting the essence of the Sewol ferry disaster to mask everything in
ambiguity, with an emphasis on issues that seemed likely to cause political/ideological agitation (Kim, Yu, Jung, & Lee 2014; Korea Broadcasting
Journalist Association 2014b; Jung 2015). Amidst this symbolic erasureof those essential aspects to the MV Sewol disaster along with its victims and bereaved families, one could also observe tendentiousness17
in favor of the authorities. Unjust external interference and internal
regulation within media organizations have been cited as major causes
for the suspected faked situations and tendentiousness in favor of theauthorities, as seen in the coverage around the MV Sewol. Those twoelements, intertwining to operate in secret, caused untold harm to journalistic autonomy out on the field.
Various mechanisms of self-regulation, such as numerous guidelines
and codes of ethical practice,18 exist in order to prevent external interference or control. Amidst the growing criticism against the coveragearound MV Sewol, the media formed and publicized their new MV Sewol
Disaster Reporting Guidelines and Disaster Reporting Rules. However, as
Tatsuro Hanada (1999: 164–170) points out, mechanisms of self-regulation are a “representation of the power dynamic” between the national
government, civil society, and media operators. Within the frameworkof this power dynamic, there is a tendency for media operators to advocate for freedom of speech and expression, as well as independence
and autonomy, while rebuking complaints and criticisms from civil society or criticism from within, prompted by a failure of self-regulationor self-control, as unjust interference. Furthermore, although there may
be various guidelines and codes of ethical practice, in the current stateof affairs, where one’s position as a salaryman working within a media
company is valued over one’s role as a journalist, the ethical/autonomous judgments of individual journalists are often made subordinate
to the policies of that media company or the ethics of an organization.
Moreover, when enacted on the field, where various interests inevitably come into hectic conflict, that self-regulation can become a way
for media companies and individual journalists to justify Pre-Emptive
Censorship or Self-Censorship.
Hidden within the mechanisms of this power structure is the concept known as “Editorial Rights” (편집권 – 編集権). “Editorial Rights” is adistinct term, as well as concept, used only in South Korea and Japan. It
dates back to The Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association’s48

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the human rights of victims and bereaved families.
According to The Korea Press 2016 Yearbook of the Korea Press Foundation, in 2015 there were a total of 4,616 media outlets active within
South Korea. 1,447 papers printed by 1,342 companies, 57 news channels
ran by 52 broadcasting organizations (including 20 public broadcasters like the KBS or MBC), 3,094 online papers issued by 2,767 companies, and 18 news agencies and the like, each locked into a relentlesscompetition against the others.16 The problem here lies in the fact thatmost of these media outlets are focused on the intense competition foradvertising revenue and commercial profit, regardless of the uniquecharacteristics, founding objectives or institutional differences inherent to each medium and outlet. Those various media outlets burdenedwith such severe competition are not competing to produce superior ormore accurate news but are, instead, racing headlong towards a competition that can only spread sensationalism and a policy of prioritizing
the newsflash coverage. Public broadcasters like the KBS or MBC are no
exception.

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

Declaration of Editorial Competence (新聞編集権の確保に関する声明) (16thof March 1948).19 This declaration defines “Editorial Rights” as an “exclusive power to be utilized by owners and managers”. This term andconcept were then introduced to South Korea in the 1960s (Lim 1964).
Indeed, The Broadcasting Act (enacted in 2000) guarantees the freedom
and independence of broadcast programming (Article 4), while the Act
on the Freedom of Newspapers, etc. and Guarantee of their Functions (enacted in 2005) guarantees the freedom and independence of editing(Article 3) respectively.20 However, the interpretation and implementation of “Editorial Rights” is still rather confused in South Korea. Thereis a tangled mass of claims such as those that the ownership and implementation of “Editorial Rights” is exclusive to the management, claims
that it is within the autonomous/independent domain of the editorial
office, as well as claims that it is to be shared between the management and the editorial office. Opinions regarding its purpose are justas mixed, where one perspective considers it a device to prevent unjust
external interference or intervention, another understands it to mean
the internal freedom of the press21 and so on (Lee 2009). Although there
are numerous claims and opinions surrounding the substance or purpose of “Editorial Rights”, the common factor amongst them is that theyeach recognize “Editorial Rights” as some exclusive power to be usedby themselves. The existence of civil society and the ordinary people
are not referenced therein: they are not recognized as active bodies collaborating to compose a media environment, but merely as outsiders
or objects.

The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

military dictatorship under Chun Doo-hwan (1980–1988), there was a
growing resistance fighting for democratization and freedom of thepress. Although that resistance was initially led by the so-called opposition forces during the 1970s, such as students, academics and religious
believers, by the 1980s, this had expanded to include ordinary people
like laborers, farmers, and the urban poor. It was such struggles that
ultimately culminated in the democratic uprising of June 1987 (Citizens’
Coalition for Democratic Media 2017). These movements founded on
the involvement and solidarity of civil society and ordinary people continued, even after 1987, across a range of different formats and contents.
To focus on three events from the history of South Korean journalismthat exhibit the core characteristics and meaning of civilian involvement and solidarity: 1) The Dong-a Ilbo Blank Advertisements Incident,
2) The foundation of The Hankyoreh, 3) The Foundation of OhmyNews.
1) The Dong-a Ilbo Blank Advertisements Incident

in seeking the reformation and democratization of speech
Despite the exclusion of civil society and the ordinary people from themain debate surrounding “Editorial Rights” and the internal freedomof the press, the history around the democratization and reform of thepress within South Korean society is also a history of actions aspiring
towards civilian involvement and solidarity. Following the harsh era of
the reconstruction dictatorship under Park Chung-hee (1961–1979) andand the adverts of encouragement
After its liberation (with Japan’s defeat) in 1945, newspapers with a leftwing (progressive) tone disappeared as Korea passed through a periodof US military governance, with many mainstream newspapers speaking for the right-wing (conservative) forces and their anti-communist
ideology. However, they maintained a critical attitude towards the government, and The Dong-a Ilbo, in particular, was seen as the representative for opposition papers dating back to The First Republic (Chae
2015). This was the situation when the Park Chung-hee administration(The Third Republic), which had risen through the May 16 coup of 1961,
introduced its direct regulation and suppression of the press. On the
8th of January 1974, it issued its first and second emergency presidential
decree, banning all acts that might oppose/reject/insult the restoration
constitution.
On the 24th of October 1974, approximately 180 journalists from The
Dong-a Ilbo and The Dong-A Broadcasting System announced The
Declaration to Practice Press Freedom and declared that they “will notyield to any force pushing back against press freedom and will expend

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2. The history of civilian involvement and solidarity

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

every effort to practice press freedom, a basic requirement for the existence of any free and democratic society”. The military dictatorship
responded by putting pressure on the managers at The Dong-a Ilbo
through the suppression of advertisements. Their advertising contracts
were canceled. On December 30th of that same year, The Dong-a Ilbo advertisement manager called for adverts of encouragement in the paper.
It was a message to the effect of “With all large adverts from our major
advertisers canceled, I cannot fulfill my duties as an adman except bycalling for opinion ads from individuals/parties/movements and also
adverts of encouragement for this paper as well as any new year’s greetings ads. We hope for enthusiastic support.” The ordinary people who
saw this notice started sending adverts of encouragement or donations
for The Dong-a Ilbo, and by May of the following year, approximately
10,352 adverts of encouragement had been published (Korea News
Editors’ Association 2007).
However, the management at The Dong-a Ilbo saw this Movementin Defence of Press Freedom by the journalists as a disorder within theranks caused by collective complaints and disobedience against thecompany’s editors and their policies, whilst registering the government’s suppression of advertisements as an administrative threat posedby the external suppression of advertisements. Thus, they dismissedroughly 150 reporters/PDs/announcers for the reason that they had infringed upon “the rights of editors, appointed by the publisher, regarding the production/editing/composition of newspapers/publications/broadcasts”. After this, that critical attitude towards government power
vanished, to be replaced by an eager promotion of the reconstruction
regime’s righteous legitimacy. Starting with The Dong-a Ilbo, which
had criticized the government as an opposition paper during The First
Republic, most media outlets became a mere attendant to power, there
to handle the political manipulation of symbols for the government.
They’d chosen to grow as a corporate industry amidst those criticisms
deriding them as the “Propaganda Complex” or “Institutional Press”(Chae 2015; Korea News Editors’ Association 2007).
Ultimately, the Movement in Defence of Press Freedom, and the52

The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

involvement of those ordinary people who supported it, did not succeed.
One of the factors that led to this result was the concept of “Editorial
Rights” interpreted as an exclusive power to be utilized by owners andmanagers. In this way, the notion of “Editorial Rights” has since crippled
various actions aspiring to democratize and increase the independence
or autonomy of the press. However, the values evidenced within The
Declaration to Practice Press Freedom and the experience of civilian
involvement would become a foundation for the many acts of involvement and solidarity to follow, each seeking the reformation and democratization of the media.
2) The foundation of The Hankyoreh through citizen’s shares

The proceeding 1980s was a dark time, an era that erased much of thepress. In July 1980, the Chun Doo-hwan military authorities (The Fifth
Republic) laid the foundations for autocratic rule through a forced
mass dismissal of journalists and policies annexing the entire media.
So began a great purge of so-called anti-national journalists. The regulation and manipulation of the press through acts like The Framework
Act on Press (언론기본법 – Eonlongibonbeob) and Press Guidelines (보도지
침 – Bodojichim) became the norm. This produced a generation of politically adaptive journalists, who were comfortable with self-censorship,
creating a climate that favored acceptance of the status quo over any
rigorous criticism. It was also an age of absurdity where media companies that colluded with power would grow into major corporations(Yoon 2000).
However, by the turn of the 1980s, new media outlets began to emerge,
reporting and explaining truths that the so-called “Institutional Press”
would warp or ignore. On the 19th of December 1984, those dismissed
journalists and publishers created The Democratic Press Movement
Council (Henceforth, the DPMC). This would later become The Citizens’
Coalition for Democratic Media (henceforth, the CCDM)22 which isstill active as a civilian media watchdog within South Korea today.
In 1985, the DPMC formed an alternative media outlet, the monthly
magazine Mal (말 – Speech),23 with an inaugural issue (published on
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The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapathat struggle against government dictatorship, and the grassroots civilian movements which remained relentless in their desire for the democratization of journalism.

the 15th of June 1985) in which they proposed the establishment of an
innovative media organization. They envisioned a media organization
for the people, which would work through co-ownership and collaboration with their financiers: those same ordinary people who desired ademocratic press system (Chae 2015). The following year, 1986, civilian
movements like The Movement Refusing to Pay KBS License Fees and
The Movement Against Watching KBS Programs spread throughout
the nation.26 Such trends towards involvement and solidarity became
the bedrock for the democratic uprising of June 1987 and would provide the momentum necessary to guide the newspaper The Hankyoreh
into existence.
In May 1988, The Hankyoreh was founded through The Citizen’s
Shares System to stand as the advocate of “Journalism for Democracy,
Journalism for the People, Journalism for a People”. The Citizen’s Shares
System is where ordinary people provide funds by buying small sumsof stocks to directly support the newspaper company as shareholders.
Shares were officially offered to the public immediately after a convention to promote the paper’s foundation, held on the 30th of October 1987.
When sales started, these shares were mostly bought by academics. But,
after the candidate backed by the democracy movement lost the presidential elections in December of that same year, the number of sharespurchased by ordinary people rapidly increased, with approximately 27
thousand people taking part in the trade. Thus, the initial goal of raising
5 billion won (around 5 million dollars) following the foundation wasachieved just 108 days after sales commenced.
The Hankyoreh was founded around journalists dismissed during
the 1970s and 80s. However, it was only made possible by the ordinary
people who supported The Movement in Defence of Press Freedom
through encouragement advertisement during The Dong-a Ilbo Blank
Advertisements Incident in the 1970s, and the many people who responded to the alternative media outlet the monthly magazine Mal,
whilst supporting actions like The Movement Refusing to Pay KBS
License Fees or The Movement Against Watching KBS Programmes
throughout the 1980s. It should be seen as an accomplishment born of

On the 22nd of February 2000, the online newspaper OhmyNews (http://ohmynews.com) began publications. It made the most of features distinct to Internet technology, like two-way communication and easy
accessibility, while its criticism of old media and communication structures worked in tandem with its goal of forming a new public sphere,
to achieve rapid growth.24 A major factor contributing to that growth
was its Citizen Journalist System which advocates for journalism
through civilian involvement. The founder and representative reporterof OhmyNews, Oh Yeon-ho, had previously worked within the monthly
magazine Mal. Though he was a successful scoop journalist and investigative reporter at the Mal, he’d faced various limitations as a journalist in a non-mainstream media outlet, and had always taken issue witha news production culture controlled by major media companies.25
Considering these issues and limitations led him to the conclusion that“Every Citizen is a Journalist”.
When examined as a type of civilian involvement journalism,
OhmyNews holds two main points of interest (Hong 2003). Firstly, it employs many techniques to invigorate the involvement of civilian journalists. For instance, it has run a journalist making program to help civilian
journalists create articles since its initial foundation. It also places norestrictions on the content or format of articles created by civilian journalists. It remains flexible regarding copyright, so articles written andresearched by civilian journalists can be posted on other news sites
simultaneously. Secondly, it makes full use of features distinct to theInternet in order to invigorate reader Board involvement. For example,
OhmyNews provides a message board on each article, allowing readers
to post their own opinions straight after reading an article. Though thisformat of attaching message boards to articles is no longer uncommon,
OhmyNews was the first in the country to introduce such a system.

54553) The foundation of OhmyNews in which every citizen is a journalist

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

3. The rise of investigative journalism and Newstapa
1) The broadcasting station strikes and the documentary film,
Criminal Conspiracy
In August 2017, Criminal Conspiracy, a documentary film planned/produced by Newstapa, was screened in cinemas around the country. Its director, PD Choi Seung-ho, was best known for delivering influential workthrough the MBC’s current affairs documentary series, PD Notebook. He
was dismissed in July 2012 and joined Newstapa from 2013.
So, what happened in 2012 (Jung 2012: 381–382)? At the time, thebroadcasting station strikes had developed into a big issue within the
broadcasting world and South Korean society as a whole. The strikethat began with the MBC trade union, in January 2012, had expanded
to include many broadcasting stations within South Korea such as theKBS, YTN, and the Yonhap News Agency. They called for the resignation of those company presidents controlled by the government, alongside a pledge to protect the independence, autonomy, and impartialityof broadcasting. However, current affairs programs were canceled one
after the other during these strikes. Many journalists and PDs were
faced with dismissal or disciplinary action. News programs would report about the weather or some weekend trends rather than criticize
the government. There were even allegations that public information
guidelines had been sent by the Blue House, demanding an expanded

broadcast on some serial killings to obscure issues that might inconvenience the government. Reporters Without Borders and Freedom
House lowered their ratings and rankings on the level of press freedom
in South Korea, ruling it a Country with Partial Freedom of the Press.
While the UN requested the revision of several laws that would infringe
upon basic human rights.
In June of that same year, the KBS trade union returned to work, ending the strike that’d lasted for a whole 94 days. Though they weren’t
able to oust the company president, they’d been told the management
and labor force had agreed upon: the minimization of any disciplinary action against those trade union members involved, the formationof a committee for impartial broadcasting, the revival of investigative
reporting teams and current affairs programs, as well as the cancellation of a radio program dedicated to presidential speeches. MBC’s tradeunion ceased their strike spanning 170 days, in June of that same year,
but a total of 98 trade union members received heavy disciplinary action, including 6 dismissals and 38 suspensions inside MBC headquarters. While in their 18 affiliated companies, 56 people were put before
the personnel commission and disciplinary actions proceeded as due
process. The Yonhap News Agency, which had entered its first strikein 23 years, returned to work after 100 days, in June of that same year.
There was apparently an agreement between the management andlabor force on impartial reporting, reasonable personnel administration, better working conditions, more democracy within the company,
strengthening the competitiveness of the news agency, the improvement of regional reporting structures as well as the removal of suchdiscriminations, the institution of an editorial commissioner subject tointerim appraisals, and the implementation of an impartial reporting
responsibility assessment system.
In 2017, 5 years after the conclusion to that extended strike, tradeunions at the KBS and MBC once again began a strike calling for the
resignation of the management. The situation seems similar to thatof 2012, except worse. Most of those agreements made in 2012 hadn’t
been upheld. The stations had not repaired the damage done to the56

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Of course, OhmyNews was only able to achieve its rapid growth due
to: the introduction of progressive politics by president Kim Dae-jungas well as president Roh Moo-hyun, the people’s mistrust of the oldmainstream media, and their profound desire for political involvement.
So, it is within the context of this history that OhmyNews continues its
innovative efforts to change the major media companies’ dominanceover the “structure of production, distribution, consumption in news aswell as the exclusive journalism culture created by monopolistic pressgroups”, replacing them with a model-based around civilian involvement.26 The realization of the so-called “Guerrilla News for Solidarity
through News”27 was the result of this history and these efforts.

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

independence and autonomy of their broadcasts, both by their own
bureaucratic dispositions and those company presidents under government control, spewing out the news with a strong pro-government
bent. While the management utilized their authority over personnel
administration to continue their punishment of trade union members.
Still, some things are different, such as the fact that the government
has changed, or the fact that the Candlelight Will are supporting thesestrikes driven by a desire to deal with the corruption of the press andthe fact that there are now numerous alternative media outlets in action. As a documentary film directed by one of the key players amidst
those 2012 strikes, PD Choi Seung-ho, Criminal Conspiracy is introducedwith the following description on the Newstapa homepage:28
Unprecedented national disasters, such as the MV Sewol Disasterof 2014 and the Choi Soon-sil state power monopolization incidentof 2016, have broken out in broad daylight within the Republic ofKorea, a mature democratic nation. How has that happened? Infact, there were multiple warning signs before either incident roseto those peaks of calamity. Had we but looked, and had our publicbroadcasters, who retain the largest journalistic manpower in thiscountry, spewing out the news at over 10 million people per day, hadthey only kept proper watch, these incidents would not have reachedtheir calamitous scale.
The film, Criminal Conspiracy, uses the documents and testimoniesof those who were there, to reveal how the Republic of Korea wasleft stranded by a public broadcasting system made mute throughthe anesthetics of power. Thus, it approaches the accomplices andpursues their responsibility as loyal helpers in the government
conspiracy to seize the press. In particular, for the first time ever,former President Lee Myung-bak, who should bear the greatest guilt
amongst those numerous accomplices, is questioned on camera
regarding his culpability in this seizure of the press.
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The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

Through the film, Criminal Conspiracy, ordinary people could examine the events that’d transpired within public broadcasters.29 The
Candlelight Will, driven by a desire to deal with the corruption of thepress, supported the strikes in both public broadcasting networks anddemanded the resignation of their managers. So, at last, the management for both the KBS and MBC were replaced. In January 2017, thepresident of the MBC was dismissed, and a new president installed by
December of that same year. This role fell to the Newstapa PD, Choi
Seung-ho. As the new president, Choi Seung-ho declared that he would
return to Newstapa once he’d finished reforming the MBC. Meanwhile,
The KBS Board Governors convened in January 2018, where they’dpassed a proposal to dismiss the president, and in April of that year,
former KBS PD, Yang Sung-dong was made the 23rd president of KBS.
Thus, the 2017 strikes were able to replace the management, a goal
they’d fought for in 2012. Now, these new presidents of the KBS and MBC
carry the hopes and desires driving the Candlelight Will, to reform publicbroadcaster and Remove Accumulated Evils in the Press.
2) The meaning of Newstapa within the history and context ofSouth Korean journalism
In South Korea, the name PD journalism had swiftly spread as a term
similar to investigative journalism. PD journalism describes the ongoing
activity of PDs, who’ve traditionally managed the planning, production,and direction of programs, entering the field of reporting, previously
seen as the territory of journalists, to produce and broadcast documentaries that cover and comment upon current affairs. Examples of suchprograms include the KBS’ 60 Minutes of Tracking (5th of March, 1983–
30th of August, 2019) and the MBC’ PD Notebook (1st of May, 1990–present). PD journalism has been praised for circumventing the restraints ofa reporting system bound by the press rooms and raising the standardsof South Korean journalism by taking a more creative approach to finding and following issues.
When compared to the so-called Reporter journalism,30 which is
the reporting done by journalists within the broadcasting station,
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PD journalism holds five broad benefits (Choi 2004). First, PDs are free

The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

from the press rooms of the department or institution, hence they’reless likely to collude with power and will not hesitate to expose a scandal. Second, in-depth reporting holds a distinct advantage over the
shorter runtime of news broadcasts. Third, they have not received any
report writing training, so they’re free from the restrictions of a news
frame. Fourth, they can spend longer on an in-depth report to deliverricher depictions and interpretations. Fifth, the PD structure has moreautonomy regarding the production of programs.
Based on these qualities, PD journalism, in other words, investigative journalism, has the potential to overcome those negative practices
concealed within South Korean journalism. Indeed, this potential andpower are embodied by Newstapa.
Firstly, the coverage surrounding the MV Sewol was created by thepassive reporting of “Dictated Journalism” combined with the exclusive
and monopolistic nature of the press corps. This resulted in a mass-production of news reports that leaned towards the reasoning or opinionsof the government and administrative authorities. There were endlessaccusations of faked situations. Newstapa employs data journalism toboth overcome their difficulties in accessing information sources as a
non-profit alternative media outlet and avoid the harmful influence of“Dictated Journalism”. According to journalist Kwon Hye-jin, the chief
data journalism researcher at Newstapa, by utilizing open sources and
The Freedom of Information Act, data journalism can gather/interpret
ample amounts of data with which to unearth hidden truths (Choi 2015).
Their main information sources are not the public figures, groups, andinstitutions accessed through press rooms, but the data that they dig
up themselves.
Secondly, the coverage surrounding the MV Sewol fell into a stateof collective journalism with a torrential-downpour of heated coverage.
Their endless competition in pursuit of commercialism had establisheda policy of prioritizing the news flash and produced a mass of sensationalistic news. Fact checks were omitted and there was a lack of in-depth
reporting. By contrast, Newstapa, which might seem like a weekly news

magazine with videos, manages to dig up those issues, which the major
media outlets have excluded or minimized due to that fixation with thecommercialist competition, then, by delving deeper into their history
and context, asks Why?, to present an analysis/explanation in answer
to the question, What should be done?
Thirdly, in 2017, trade unions for the public broadcasters KBS and
MBC entered a strike calling for the resignation of the management, but
the management at both stations rejected resignation. The concept of“Editorial Rights” was brought up as the main basis for this decision.
Indeed, some fear that Article 4 of the Broadcasting Act, the Freedom
and Independence of Broadcast Programming could be interpreted as
yet another exclusive right of the manager.31 Being a non-profit alternative media outlet operated entirely on the financial backing from its
supporter members, Newstapa may have a good chance of manifesting
internal freedom of the press that is so difficult to realize within the
more insular and bureaucratic major media organizations.
Meanwhile, the format and content of journalism based around civilian involvement has continued to evolve via trial-and-error. However,each also has its limits. For example, The Hankyoreh, founded through
The Citizen’s Shares System, has contributed much to the democratization of journalism and South Korean society by representing a progressive position within the marketplace of mainstream media. However,the paper’s main source of funding is advertising revenue. It is impossible to entirely escape the negative practices rooted within South
Korean journalism while incorporated in the mainstream media market. OhmyNews shows the benefits of civilian involvement and publicjournalism through its Citizen Journalist System, greatly altering thestructure of production – distribution – consumption of news in a journalism culture dominated by major media companies. But, it may be
a little lacking in the expertise required for the journalistic process orin-depth analysis.
Newstapa could be considered an institutional format that has
evolved by revising or compensating for such limits. As a non-profit
alternative media outlet employing a civilian-involvement-based

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The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

Construction of a Democratic Media System, a Destination
As stated above, Newstapa and its documentary film, Criminal Conspiracy carried the hopes of those ordinary people driven by a desire to remove Accumulated Evils in the Press and achieve Candlelight Democracy,
standing at the frontline of the 2017 KBS and MBC strike. Now, to revisit
questions raised in the introduction: Does replacing the management atthese public broadcasters means the successful reform of public broadcasting? Will that better the negative practices hidden within South
Korean journalism and remove the Accumulated Evils in the Press?
According to “the Model of Democratic Media System” presented by

J. Curran,32 the public broadcaster is a Core Media that all citizens canaccess and share, making it the institutional format with the highest
possibility of becoming the Core Public Sphere (Curran 2002: 240–247).
Thus, even in our current media environment consisting of multiple
media/channels, wherein numerous alternative media outlets haveachieved much through the support and solidarity of ordinary citizens,
we cannot give up on public broadcasting. To quote that introduction
for the film Criminal Conspiracy, had “our public broadcasters, who retain the largest journalistic manpower in this country, spewing out thenews at over 10 million people per day”, properly performed their roles
as a Core Media and the Core Public Sphere, the MV Sewol Disaster andPark Geun-hye–Choi Soon-sil Gate would not have become so calamitous in scale. Hence, Newstapa is wholly justified in its concerns about“a public broadcasting system made mute through the anesthetics ofpower” leaving South Korean society “stranded”, and it seems simply
impossible to refute the notion that reform of public broadcasting is thelogical first step on this road towards the Removal of Accumulated Evils
in the Press.
Incidentally, what or who does public broadcasting entail? Publicbroadcasting isn’t synonymous with the management. In which case,what were the other members of those public broadcasters, “who retain
the largest journalistic manpower”, doing while the very system of public broadcasting and South Korean society collapsed around them? Why
couldn’t they do more to expose the internal censorship and unjust pressures exerted by the management? Why didn’t the major mainstream
media outlets make an effort to report on those issues? The harmful
influence of press rooms and press corps, the harmful influence spreadthrough endless competition in pursuit of commercialism, the harmful
influence stemming from a concept of “Editorial Rights” that violate thefreedom of the press and autonomy on the field, these and more remain
ingrained within the institutional culture and news media system insidepublic broadcasters. Though they’ve grown noticeably worse during thepast nine years, such harmful influences are deep-rooted practices thathave attained generality and normalcy in journalism culture over the62

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financial model, it performs investigative journalism while showing independence and expertise to be its key strengths. Obviously, the physical environment in which Newstapa works is likely no match against
the production spaces available to the KBS or MBC. The hurdles thatan anti-mainstream alternative media outlet must overcome, within ajournalism environment controlled by major mainstream media outlets,
are as high as ever. Yet the voluntary aid and support from ordinary people provide Newstapa with both its most important foundations andvital source of sustenance.
Behind the support which the Candlelight Will shows for Newstapa
lies a history of solidarity between journalists and civil society, fighting
for the democratization of journalism with the same spirit seen in that
Declaration to Practice Press Freedom, a history of voluntary involvement
and support by the people, experiencing those successes and failures
together, an accumulation of trial-and-error dating back to the 1970s.
Then, there is the hope that Newstapa might be one of those equipped
to remove the negative practices rooted in South Korean journalism, theAccumulated Evils in the Press. Perhaps, in some senses, the build-up
of negative practices within South Korean journalism, the Accumulated
Evils in the Press, became the birthplace of some positive dynamics, manifesting as the build-up of latent potential and a determination to deal
with those accumulated evils.
4. The Removal of Accumulated Evils in the Press and theTHE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

decades. As such, the responsibility for these Accumulated Evils in thePress should not be attributed to those media company presidents andmanagers alone.
New presidents and managements were appointed to the publicbroadcasters, the KBS and MBC. They carry the hopes and desires of the
Candlelight Will which seeks to remove Accumulated Evils in the Press.
Now, in April 2018, four whole years after the MV Sewol sunk, they’ve
finally managed to commence a reform operation aiming to repair thedamage done by the Sewol Ferry Disaster and the Sewol Ferry Press
Coverage Disaster. However, this is merely the opening of one door, and
the Accumulated Evils in the Press cannot be removed so easily. The path
to removing the Accumulated Evils in the Press may not be found fromjust replacing the management unless each and every internal member
begins by repenting for the role they played as a party involved with
Accumulated Evils in the Press. They must be aware of the negative practices built up around them, make constant efforts to remove these, endeavor to construct a democratic and transparent institutional culture,
as well as adopt a consistent attitude that accepts civil society and theordinary people as active bodies, collaborators in the construction of ademocratic media system.
As described in this paper, Newstapa’s investigative journalism, as
well as its documentary film, Criminal Conspiracy, demonstrated thepowers required to map out that long road ahead and lead the journey towards reforming public broadcasting and Removing Accumulated
Evils in the Press. As an alternative media outlet and a part of the democratic media system, Newstapa’s next task is to manifest the uniquestrengths of non-profit/investigative journalism through further innovations and achievements in a quest to remove the negative practices
rooted deep within the mainstream culture of South Korean journalism,
the Accumulated Evils in the Press.

The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

Notes
1. Gwanghwamun Square in downtown Seoul where candlelight vigils were
held referred to Candlelight Square. It is widely used as a term to symbolize
the meaning of an open public sphere accessible to everyone, a candlelight
vigil, and the public sentiments.
2. On the 29th of October 2016, after the first candlelight vigil was held throughout Korea, large-scale candlelight vigils were held at Gwanghwamun Square
every Saturday. Since the first candlelight vigil was far more than expected,
it was necessary to organize and run the vigils. Therefore, the Emergency
Action Calling for the Retirement of President Park Geun-hye (henceforth,
the Retirement Action) in which 1,533 civic groups participated was officiallylaunched. Since then, about 2,300 civic groups and grassroots organizationsin 17 metropolitan cities nationwide have expanded to participate. A total of
23 times candlelight vigils were held until the 29th of April 2017, and approximately 17.99 million people (estimated by the Retirement Action) participated in the vigils. The expenses of preparing and holding candlelight vigils
were appropriated by donations and support from citizens. According to thefinancial settlement report on the Retirement Action (the 12th of May 2017),
the total amount of collection was 398,157,374 won (around 400,000 dollars).
With the Declaration of Dissolution on the 31st May 2017, the Retirement
Action carried out in the planning and implementation of the citizen participation and solidarity to inherit the performance of the candlelight vigils.
See the Internet official website (http://bisang2016.net/) for more information on the Retirement Action and their activities.
3. The impeachment of the president is confirmed by the Constitutional
Court’s ruling after being proposed by the National Assembly. On the 9thof December 2016, the Korean National Assembly passed a bill to impeach
the president Park Geun-hye on grounds of suspicion of crimes against theConstitution and laws. 299 members of the 300 members in the National
Assembly participated in the vote, and 234 votes in favor, 56 against, 7 invalids and 2 abstentions. On the 10th of March 2017, the Constitutional Court
unanimously decided to impeach the president Park.
4. The 19th presidential election was scheduled to be in December 2017 under
the Public Offices Election Law. However, the presidential election was heldon the 9th of May 2017, in accordance with the Korean Constitution, which
stipulates that elections must be held within 60 days of the president’s

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dismissal. The term of the President Moon Jae-in and his government began
the day after the election.
5. However, it was not the first time that demand for the president Park’s resignation: Suspicion of the National Intelligence Service’s manipulation of
public opinion in the 18th presidential elections (2013), suspicions of thecover-up of the MV Sewol disaster (2014), forcing the nationalization of
Korean history textbooks (2015), the death of a farmer activist Baek Nam-gi
caused by a water cannon (2016), and so on. There have been claims anddemonstrations demanding the president Park’s resignation.
6. The generalist programming channel opened on the 1st of December 2015.
They are TV channels that can organize programs in all genres, such as
news, drama, culture, entertainment, and sports on a paid platform such as
cable television or satellite broadcasting. There are four channels such as TV
Chosun (affiliated to the Chosun Ilbo), JTBC (affiliated to the Joong-Ang Ilbo),
Channel A (affiliated to the Dong-a Ilbo), and MBN (affiliated to the Maeil
Business Newspaper).
7. Confidence in and support for the JTBC has been boosted by news reportsof the MV Sewol Disaster. At that time, JTBC was engaged in news reportingwhich was completely different from public broadcasters such as KBS and
MBC, and major newspapers. The essential characteristics are the choice
and interpretation of issues from the viewpoint of victims and bereaved families and relatively substantial fact-checking and in-depth reporting. Even
after other news media outlets shifted their coverage from the issue of the
MV Sewol Disaster to another issue, JTBC continued to keep and report on
the truth of the sinking and the current situation of the MV Sewol.

The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

demanding reforms such as the formation of the Board of Governors which
has been intervened by the government and the political party.
9. “Giraegi” (기레기) is a word that is made by combining Gija (기자 – journalist)
with Thuraegi (쓰레기 – trash) in Korean.
10. As of the end of 2017, more than 40,000 members are paying regular donations. According to Newstapa’s accounts (the 3rd of March 2018), the total
amount of donations received from citizens over the first year of 2017 was
5,958,180,467 won (around 5,000,000 dollars). Refer to Newstapa’s Internet
official website (https://kcij.org/board/notice/628).
11. In the documentary film Spy Nation was tracking so-called the false espionage case of Seoul city officials by Lee Myung-bak’s government in 2012.
At that time, the Korean National Intelligence Service (KNIS) arrested Yoo
Woo-sung, a North Korean defector who was a civil servant in Seoul, as aNorth Korean spy. Most of the evidence presented by the KNIS, including
Yoo’s sister’s confession, was fabricated. PD Choi Seung-ho searched Korea,
China, Japan, and Thailand for 40 months to find out the truth about the spy
scandal. In January 2005, the Supreme Court of Korea acquitted Yoo’s spying
charges.
12. The press strike in 2012 will be discussed in a later chapter.
13. Story funding refers to the introduction of cloud funding in the planningand production of movies. Unspecific people who are in favor of intentions
and stories of the movie participate in collecting production costs via theInternet. The names of all the participants were listed on the movie’s endrole.

8. The president of KBS is recommended by the KBS Board of Governors, thetop decision-making body, and appointed by the President. The KBS Boardof Governors consists of 11 members, including seven recommended by
the government and the ruling party, and four recommended by the opposition party. MBC’s president is appointed at the Board of Governors ofFoundation for Broadcast Culture. The Board of Governors of Foundationfor Broadcast Culture consists of 9 members, including six recommended by
the government and the ruling party, and three recommended by the opposition party. As of September 2017 when the strike began, current presidents
and the Board of Governors of the KBS and MBC were appointed under thePark Geun-hye government. Meanwhile, as of 2018, civil society is strongly

14. “The State of Collective Journalism” refers to a situation in which all media
enter reporting the same issues and covering the same news, whether newspaper, radio, television, a weekly or monthly magazine and so on (Arai 1979).

16. As of 2015, the total income of paper newspapers was 56.7 percent for advertising, 15.9 percent for newspaper sales and 4.4 percent for the Internet
content. The sources of broadcasting revenue are 42.6 percent of advertising,

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15. “The Torrential-Downpour of Heated Coverage” refers to the repeatedflooding and stubborn coverage of ordinary peoples and victims in case of an
accident, hurting the emotions of crime victims and their families (Waseda
University Journalism Education Institute 2012: 183).

THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

11.1 percent of sponsorship, 13.5 percent of program sales and 12.0 percent
of license fees. The Internet newspaper has 44.7 percent of advertising revenue, 41.1 percent of sub-business and other business revenues, and 14.2 percent of sales of the Internet content. For details, refer to The Korean Press
Foundation (2016: 107).
17. According to Lee (2010), “Tendentiousness” means that the article drives
users’ understanding or interpretation in a certain direction. It is created by
selecting and emphasizing a part of the article’s content as well as the tone
and specific frame, and by selectively presenting news sources or quoted
sentences.
18. In Korea, there are The Code of Ethics for Newspapers (enact 1957, revision
1996), Outline of the Ethics of Newspapers (enact 1961). In addition, newspapers, broadcasters, and associations or organizations on the press have enacted and operated ethics codes, broadcasting code, news coverage rules,
and guidelines in their fields.
19. The term and concept of “Editorial Rights” has been inherent in the discourse of politics and ideology invading freedom of the press. And so, thisarticle argues that a need to be abolished the term and concept of itself.
That’s why in this article uses double quotation marks as if “Editorial Rights”.
Additionally, in Europe and America, there are used terms such as editorial
independence, edition freedom, journalistic freedom, editorial autonomy,
and internal freedom of the press, and so on.
20. Article 4 of The Broadcasting Act on the freedom and independence ofbroadcast programming is that: (1) The freedom and independence ofbroadcast programming shall be guaranteed. (2) No one shall regulate orinterfere with the broadcast programming unless as prescribed by this Act
or other Acts. (3) A broadcasting business operator shall appoint a person
in charge of broadcast programming, and make an official announcementof his name during broadcasting hours at least once in a day, and guarantee
the autonomous broadcast programming for the person in charge of broadcast programming. (4) A broadcasting business operator engaged in generalprogramming or specialized programming of news reporting shall, in orderto ensure autonomy in the production of broadcast programs, institute acovenant on broadcast programming, reflecting the opinions of the persons
engaged in data collection and production, and shall publicly announce
it. Although Article 4 of The Broadcasting Act defines the freedom and
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independence of broadcast programming, the propriety of its implementation depends on the authority of the president & manager, who can be said
to be the broadcasting service operator. In the end, it can be seen that Article
4 of The Broadcasting Act and the internal freedom of the press are locked in
the exclusive authority of management included in the concept of “Editorial
Rights”. For that interpretation and assertion, refer to Jung (2012).
21. The internal freedom of the press may require the freedom of individualjournalists to criticize editorial or management policies, freedom of conscience to refuse activities against social responsibility, freedom of choiceof professions and demand for professional training (Ishimura 1979; Hanada2013).
22. In the 1990s, the association became a media civic group called CCDM,
and ordinary citizens began to participate as members. As of 2018, there
are approximately 6,000 members of CCDM, and about 80 percent of thetotal members are ordinary citizens. Journalists who were dismissed in the
1970s are participating in the advisors of ordinary members. CCDM has been
conducting various activities such as monitoring news and media policies,
media literacy education, and so on.
23. Mal (말) means a Speech in Korean. Monthly magazine Mal which focuseson the democracy, the people, and the public, had been the only media thatreported the pro-democracy movement and exposed a News Guideline by
Chun Doo-hwan government at the time. Even though it was illegal media,
the first issue sold out in just one day. Based on the dismissed journalist’s
expertise and sense of balance, it posted news and commentary on the situation of the Korean Peninsula and the unification, trade unions’ strikes, anddemocratic movements abroad, and so on (CCDM 2017).
24. OhmyNews was founded with 200 million won(around 200,000 dollars), four
full-time reporters, and 724 citizen reporters. As of September 2017, 86,024
citizens had written 919,194 articles on a cumulative basis. According to
OhmyNews (the 17th of December 2014), The Guardian reported on the 16thof December 2004, OhmyNews had been selected as one of the top five online news sites in the world, with BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk), the New YorkTimes (http://nytimes.com), Google News (http://news.google.co.uk), and the
Scotsman (http://scotsman.com).
25. For example, there was a report on The Nogeun-ri Incident. When he wasa journalist for Mal, in October 1994, Oh Yeon-ho reported that about 400
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The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

people were killed by U.S. soldiers in the Nogeun-ri area during the Korean
War, but nobody paid attention to the report in Korean media. In September
1999, five years later, as the AP reported the incident as a scoop and causing
a stir all over the world, the Korean mainstream media outlets also covered
it as news.

Bibliography
ARAI Naoyuki 新井直之. ジャーナリズム いま何が問われているか [Journalism, What’s
the Matter Now?]. Tokyo: Toyo Keizai 東洋経済新報社 (1979)

26. For example, in December 2002, Ohmynews introduced The Voluntary
Payment System in which readers pay for the subscription, and in July 2009,
they began recruiting The 100,000 Members Club. The 100,000 Members
Club is a group of volunteers who regularly donate 10,000 won (around 10
dollars) a month to establish OhmyNews’ independent economic system.
According to the Declaration of the Launched of the 100,000 Members Club
(8th of July, 2009), in order to citizen participation journalism is free fromthe influence of the capital, the rate of income paid directly by the reader
must be raised to a minimum of 50 percent. As of September 2017, there are
10,427 members joined The 100,000 Members Club. For more information,refer to the Internet official website (www.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/payment/pay_hunthousand_main.aspx).

CHOI Yongmook 최영묵. PD수첩, 한국 PD저널리즘의 보고 [PD Notebook, Treasure
House of Korean PD Journalism]. Seoul: Communication Books 커뮤니케이션
북스 (2004)

27. It is a slogan that OhmyNews had been advocating since its foundation.
News guerrillas refer to citizen journalists.
28. See Newstapa’s Internet official website (https://film.newstapa.org/2#
about).
29. It was shown in 48 cinemas, accounting for 10 percent of cinemas
nationwide.
30. Unlike PD journalism, the term of reporter journalism is not commonly used.
Among the discussions on PD journalism, the relative and latent term used
to distinguish the two. Generally, Korean reporters have been critical of theterm of PD journalism that’s why they think journalism is a unique field ofreporters.
31. For Article 4 of The Broadcasting Act, refer to Footnote 20 in this article.
32. “The Democratic Media System Model” by J. Curran is based on European
media and their practices. In this model, Core Media is the central partof the media environment. Private Enterprise Sector, Civic Media Sector,
Professional Media Sector, and Social Market Sector are arranged around it.

70

CHAE Back 채백. 한국언론사 [History of Korean Press]. Seoul: Culturelook 컬처룩(2015)CHOI Yoonon 최윤원. “데이터 없이 진실을 얘기하긴 어렵다” [Can’t tell the truth without data]. Broadcasting Reporter 방송기자 No. 24 (2015): 34–35.
Citizens’ Coalition for Democratic Media 민주언론시민연합. 민주언론시민연합 30년사I 민주언론, 새로운 도전 [30 Years History of Citizens’ Coalition for Democratic
Media - I: Democratic Media, New Challenge]. Seoul: Black Cow 검은소 (2017)

Curran, James. Media and Power. London: Routledge (2002)
HANADa Tatsuro 花田達朗. メディアと公共圈のポリティックス [The Politics of theMedia and the Public Sphere]. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press 東京大学出版
会 (1999)
HANADa Tatsuro 花田達朗 (Ed.). 内部的メディアの自由―研究者・石川明の遺産とその継承 [Internal Freedom of the Press: The Heritage of Researchers Akira Ishikawa
and His Succession]. Tokyo: Nippon Hyoron Sya 日本評論社 (2013)
HONG Songu 홍성구. “인터넷신문의 성장과 언론 질서의 변화” [The growth of the online press and the change in the press system]. Social Science Research 사회과학연구, No. 42 (2003): 237–253.
FUJITA Hiroshi 藤田博司. どうする情報源―報道改革の分水嶺 [News Source: A Turning Point of Press Reform]. Tokyo: Liverta リベルタ出版 (2010)
ISHIMURA Zenzi 石村善治 (Ed.). 開かれたマスコミとは何か [What is the Open Press?].
Tokyo: Jiji Press 時事通信社 (1979)
JUNg Sooyoung 정수영. “편집권・편성권에 갇힌 내적 편집의 자유” [Internal freedomof the Press surrounded by “Editorial Rights”: A historical consideration
on Declaration of Editorial Competence by Japan Newspaper Publishers &Editors Association]. Korea Association for Broadcasting & Telecommunication Studies 한국방송학회 (Ed.) 관점이 있는 한국 방송문화사 [History of Korean
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The Korea Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa

Broadcast Culture from the Perspective]. Seoul: Hanul Academy 한울아카데미
(2012): 381–440.

Korea Press Foundation 한국언론진흥재단. 2016 한국언론연감 [The Korea Press: 2016
Yearbook]. Seoul: Korea Press Foundation (2016)

JUNG Sooyoung 정수영. “세월호 언론보도의 대참사는 복구할 수 있는가” [The disastrous
results of media coverage on the MV Sewol Disaster be restored? A theoretical exploration of the paradigm shift of journalism norms]. Communication
Theory 커뮤니케이션이론, No. 11 (2) (2015): 56–103.

LEE Joonung 이준웅. “한국언론의 경향성과 이른바 ‘사실과 의견의 분리’ 문제” [Tendentiousness of Korean journalism and the problem of ‘the distinction between
facts and opinions’]. Journal of Korean Society for Journalism & Communication Studies 한국언론학보, No. 54 (2) (2010): 187–209.

KIM Chunsik, YU Hongsik, JUNG Nakwon, & LEE Yonghwa. 김춘식, 유홍식, 정낙원, 이영화. 재난보도 현황 및 개선 방안 연구 세월호참사 보도 내용분석을 중심으로 [A Study on
the Realities and Improvement Measures of Disaster Reporting]. Seoul: Korea
Press Foundation 한국언론진흥재단 (2014).

KIM Chunsik. & LEE Yonghwa. “참여정부의 언론정책에 관한 연구 ‘취재지원시스템
선진화방안’ 보도 분석을 중심으로” [An analysis of news frames on ‘Advance a
Support System for News Coverage’ policy of the Participatory Government].
Journal of Korean Society for Journalism & Communication Studies 한국언론학보,No. 52 (2) (2008): 303–327.
KIM Namsuck 김남석. “출입처 기자단 기자실 형성과정과 현황” [Press corps, formation
process and current state of press room]. Kwanhun Journal 관훈저널, No. 42 (2)(2001): 185–196.
KIM Oakjo 김옥조. 미디어윤리 [Media Ethics]. Seoul: Communication Books 커뮤니케이션북스 (2004)

KO Songpyo 고성표. “제3 의 언론권력 오마이뉴스 대해부” [The third press power:
OhmyNews dissection]. Monthly Magazine JoongAng 월간중앙, No. 29 (3),(March 2003) URL: http://jmagazine.joins.com/monthly/view/211605
Korea Broadcasting Journalist Association 방송기자연합회. 저널리즘연구 시리즈 II방송뉴스 바로하기 [Journalism Research Series II: Revision of Broadcasting news].
Seoul: Culturelook 컬처룩 (2014a)
Korea Broadcasting Journalist Association 방송기자연합회. 저널리즘연구 시리즈 III
세월호 보도, 저널리즘의 침몰 재난보도의 문제점과 개선방안 [ Journalism Research
Series III: MV Sewol Press Coverage, the Sinking of Journalism]. Seoul: Korea
Broadcasting Journalist Association (2014b)

Korea News Editors’ Association 한국신문방송편집인협회 (Ed.). 한국신문방송편집인협
회 50년사 1957–2007 [50 Years History of Korea News Editors’ Association 1957–
2007]. Seoul: Hanul Academy 한울아카데미 (2007)72

LEE Seungsun 이승선. “편집권에 관한 법적 논의의 특성 및 한계” [A study on the legal
characteristics of Editorial Rights]. Social Science Research 사회과학연구,No. 20 (1) (2009): 143–166.
LIM Guensoo 임근수. “신문 공정성의 실제 편집권의 옹호와 독립” [A practice of fairness
in the press: The advocacy and independence of Editorial Rights]. Newspaper& Broadcasting 신문과 방송 (May 1964): 17–19.

MORI Tomoomi 森類臣. “韓国・盧武鉉政権による「記者クラブ」解体の研究” [Research
about dismantling of ‘Kija Clubs’ by the Roh Moo-hyun government’s in the
Republic of Korea]. Review Social Science 評論・社会科学, No. 89 (2009): 31–87.
MORI Tomoomi 森類臣. “韓国における代案言論メディア創出のダイナミズム：言論民主化運動の系譜から” [The dynamic of appearance alternative media in Korea:
Focused on the genealogy of media democratization movement]. OKUNO
Masahiro & NAKAE Keiko 奥野昌宏・中江桂子 (Eds.). メディアと文化の日韓関係――
相互理解の深化のために [Japan-Korea Relations between the Media and Culture:
For the Purpose of Deepening Mutual Understanding] Tokyo: Shinyosya 新曜社(2016): 215–253.
Shoemaker, P. J. & Reese, S. Mediating the Message: Theories of Influences on
Mass Media Content (2th Ed.). NY: Longman (1996)
Tuchman, G. Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: Free
Press (1978)
Tuchman, G. The symbolic annihilation of women by the mass media. In Cohen,
S. & Young, J. (Eds.) The Manufacture of News: Deviance, Social Problems andthe Mass Media. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage (1981): 169–185.
Waseda University Institute for Education in Journalism 早稲田大学ジャーナリズム
教育研究所 (Ed.). エンサイクロペディア現代ジャーナリズム [Encyclopedia of Contemporary Journalism]. Tokyo: Waseda University Press 早稲田大学出版部 (2012)73

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YOON Duckan 윤덕한. “전두환 정권 하의 언론” [The press under the Chun Doo-hwan
regime]. SONG Gunho et al 송건호 외 (Eds.). 한국언론 바로보기 [Face up to Korean
Press]. Seoul: Five Cars 다섯수레 (2000): 488–526.
Initially, this essay appeared in Japanese in the next book:Tansa-journalism/Chousa-houdou 探査ジャーナリズム／調査報道 (Investigative
Journalism: Nonprofit News Organizations Emerging in Asia), Tokyo: Sairyusha,
2018, 20–52.
TEZUKA Mafuyu translated this essay into English, and the author edited thetranslation.

74

The Reporter of Taiwan
The development of civil society,the social movement of media reform,
and the birth of nonprofit investigative journalism
LIN I-hsuan
Introduction
In December 2015, The Reporter (報導者) made its debut, becoming thefirst nonprofit online media outlet committed solely to investigative
journalism within Taiwan. It has since gradually gathered support, stabilized its business model, and received recognition for the high qualityof its contents both inside and outside the country. Though it was not
all plain sailing, The Reporter hit the ground running and judging by
its trajectory over the past two and a half years. It seems to promise amuch-desired clear stream within the Taiwanese media environment,
too often manipulated by the desires of business people or politicians
and so easily swayed by the nationalistic dialogue surrounding the issue
of independence or unification.
So, how did a media outlet like The Reporter emerge within Taiwan
in the first place?
Within the west, media organizations dedicated to investigative journalism, alongside the NGOs and NPOs that support such outlets, arrived
on the scene well over three decades ago. In recent years, these outlets
have developed into a sort of global phenomenon, garnering attention
in both economically developed and developing nations. Their recent
achievements include the Panama Papers, published in 2016, and theParadise Papers, published in 2017, which will be a timeless testament tothe success of international collaboration within investigative journalism. The achievements overcame the barriers of borders and language
to challenge the interests of the political and economic establishment.
However, a worldwide decline in traditional audiences and readerships, as well as the global economic downturn reducing ad revenue,
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has resulted in much of the mainstream media and online outlets in
Taiwan to cut costs in investigative journalism. Instead, they put theirefforts at the production of news with a focus on speed and sensationalism. Indeed, the collective consensus shared throughout the industry
is that the slow and costly process of investigative journalism will soon
disappear altogether. However, The Reporter has emerged amidst these
formidable conditions. What are the social forces behind the rise of investigative journalism outlets like The Reporter? How has Taiwanesesociety reacted? Moreover, what possibilities does this indicate for the
media landscape as a whole?
This paper does not treat the appearance of The Reporter as an isolated event, but, instead, seeks to analyze the society that ultimately
birthed a media outlet like it from a historical, social, and economic
perspective. First, having reflected upon the history of investigative
journalism, this paper will analyze the threats to this form of journalism imposed by harsh competition in the media environment, as well as
the emergence of civil society after the 90s, with a focus on the shifting
relationship between the media and the Taiwanese people. Finally, thispaper analyses The Reporter, which holds investigative journalism as its
sole journalistic output, to study its internal workings from the management structure to its theme selection and editorial process, to consider
how the media can contribute towards civil society’s right to knowledge.
1 The history of investigative journalism within Taiwan
1-1 The spirit of criticism in the reportage literature
Investigative journalism within Taiwan did not start in the newspaper.
Instead, it is distinct for its origins within a more literary format calledreportage literature (報導文學). Taiwan’s reportage literature refers toa story woven together from the investigative research performed byauthors, with literary descriptions or elements added to a foundationof facts and first-hand accounts. While these works based on real-life
events, the detailed descriptions and dialogue between characters include strongly literary elements, which deliberately retain the subjective
interpretations of its author. In 1935, the writer, Yang KUI (楊逵), visited76

areas afflicted by the earthquake in Taichung and Hsinchu to researchthen release his reportage A Note of Consolation and Research journey
to Earthquake areas in Taiwan (台灣地震災區勘查慰問記). This reportage
became the first piece of Taiwanese literature to include elements ofinvestigative journalism (LIN, Chi-ying 林淇瀁 2013).
After a turbulent post-war period, wherein media facing strict regulations, Taiwanese reportage literature came back into fashion during the70s, after the China Times began publishing works of reportage throughtheir literary supplement. A generation of young writers turned theirattention to the lower strata of Taiwanese society occupied by workers, women, the indigenous and impoverished, traveling deep into thehinterlands to communicate the voices of those disenfranchised people.
This reportage led to a greater awareness of the need for reform andprompted much social upheaval. Furthermore, in 1985, author, CHEN
Yingzhen, founded the Renjian Magazine (人間雑誌), a magazine whichcame to represent reportage literature in Taiwan. The Renjian Magazine,
true to its name, ran its publication under a policy of reporting with afocus on the humans themselves. It displayed a stance committed toreporting about those social realities and minorities that have been
ignored or rendered faceless by the mainstream media. The Renjian
Magazine explored the value of human existence through the daily lives,thoughts, feelings, dreams, disappointments, dignity, oppression, andemancipation of such people. It exposed many of the problems plaguing
Taiwanese society, born of authoritarian politics and a capitalist economic environment. For example, issues around environmental pollution, workers, farmers, veterans, the homeless, AIDS patients, underage
prostitution and child abuse, it released countless works of reportage on
various themes before it finally suspended publications in 1989. Though
Mr. CHEN, the founder, had supported its operation out of his pocket, it
was still unable to overcome financial difficulties and suspended publications after a little over four years. However, even today, the reportage
journalism of Renjian Magazine is acknowledged as a forerunner to investigative journalism, which made its mark in Taiwanese society. The
greatest amongst these achievements was in connecting literature to77

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lack of a heritage
With the advent of the 90s, a softening of regulations around broadcasting and written media then followed by an influx of new media
outlets. It was the period in which the democratization and liberationof the press truly began to develop. Faced with a new era, caused byradical shifts in the political and social landscape at the time, the public’s demand for information continued to increase, even more so than
before. Meanwhile, within the media industry itself, a competition wasstarting to intensify amongst journalists. Of these, those who had noknowledge or experience of investigative journalism were the majority,
yet, a few journalists were aspiring towards the practice of investigative
journalism.
In October 1996, a journalist for the Asia Weekly, SHIEH Chung-liang,
released an article exposing the connection between political corruption and secret diplomacy. It set out the accusation that Mr. LIU Tai-ying,
the chairman of the business management committee which supervised all assets and budgets within the KMT (Kuomintang, Chinese
Nationalist Party). Mr. LIU had secretly offered a political donation of
15 million dollars to the then president of America, Bill Clinton, for his
re-election campaign. This article was an investigation that boldly andthoroughly exposed the corrupt relations between money and politics,
to become an exemplary case within the history of Taiwanese journalism. Mr. SHIEH was subjected to a criminal libel suit by Mr. LIU following the publication of this article, but after a lawsuit lasting some three
years, the Taipei District Court found Mr. SHIEH not guilty. The court
had determined that the constitutional right to freedom of expression

should apply to an article based on thorough research and investigation. In 1997 the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
gave the International Freedom Press Award to Mr. SHIEH and his fellow researcher Ms. Ying CHAN, lauding the case as a victory for press
freedom in Asia.2
Furthermore, while working for the Taiwanese weekly magazine Next
Magazine in 2002, Mr. SHIEH continued to pursue the issue of funds
being misappropriated by those within the KMT for covert political
purposes. He went on to publish a unique feature exposing the process
by which so-called secret national security funds laundered outside
the country for the sake of political gain, all under the approval of thethen-president Teng-hui LEE. This particular feature recorded sales of
300,000 copies, receiving a great deal of public attention (LIN, C. C. 林
照真 2006: 51). As a result, President Teng-hui LEE ultimately made to
take to the witness stand in April 2004, and many of those involved in
the scandal, including Mr. LIU, were temporarily incarcerated; thus, theexistence and illegality of these secret government funds further proventhrough the trial. However, Mr. SHIEH himself was wiretapped by the
National Security Bureau for around two years, then accused of treason,
to receive intensive interrogations, investigations, and a foreign travelban (LIN, C. C. 林照真 2006: 63–65). All this demonstrates the significant
personal risks and costs borne by investigative reporters as they perform such vital investigations.
Other than the advent of large-scale investigative reporting withinmagazines in the 90s, even some parts of the mainstream media, theUnited Daily News, China Times, and the Apple Daily, for example, created their divisions specializing in investigative journalism following
this incident. Although the Apple Daily is now famous for its sensationalist reporting with tabloid-style journalism and paparazzi photography,
it also put some effort into its investigative journalism. Apple Daily included investigations that received much public acclaim, such as thosethat exposed the manufacture and distribution of defective television
products by a famous company. In terms of broadcast media, TV programs focusing on in-depth reporting and investigative journalism, like

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social movements and media coverage, thus allowing journalists, literary writers, and social activists to create a single expressive medium
together. Also, the photographs accompanying the reportage within
Renjian Magazine had an evocative quality to match that of the words
on the page, establishing the style of reportage literature through theirstrong impact.1
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IN-NEWS or VIEWPOINT within Taiwan Public Television Service (PTS)and VIEW within Formosa TV (FTV), emerged to tackle a broad range of

publications, weekly publications, nonprofit online media, and newspaper companies, gradually reinstating a recognition for the vital role ofinvestigative journalism within broadcasting and print media.

social phenomena and issues. On top of this, there are numerous works,
amongst the recent investigative reports produced by freelance journalists, which boast an impressive quality and influence exceeding that of
the mainstream media (LO, Shieh-hung 羅世宏 2012: 68).
However, though it might initially appear as if investigative journalism has come to take root in Taiwan since the early 90s, many scholars
have argued that, on the whole, Taiwanese media companies seem reluctant to establish a real culture of investigative journalism. Journalism
embodies the concept of watchdog against power, focusing instead on
the pursuit of profit and marketability. As such, much of investigative
reporting is more dependent on the ardent aspirations of a few individual journalists rather than any broader organizational teamwork within
the companies themselves. It means investigative journalists are to fightalone. This phenomenon is especially prevalent within print media,
and, when cost-cutting or department reductions occur in the fourth
estate, these lone wolves can often become an easy target to single out
for liquidation.
Nevertheless, there is also a movement aiming to counter these fragile foundations and lack of a strong heritage by presenting the necessity
and importance of investigative journalism to society. For example, theVivianwu Journalism Award Foundation, established in 1986, began toprovide an In-depth Reporting Award (alongside the old Breaking NewsAward and Topical Criticism Award) from 2005 onwards. Besides, theExcellent Journalism Award provided by the Foundation for Excellent
Journalism Award is the highest honor in the field of press media, introducing the Investigative Journalism category in 2011. Though there
were no award winners from print media that year, the investigative
Journalism Award within the broadcast category went to the independent journalist Kevin H. J. LEE. His self-produced work, Unveil the Truth(不能戳的秘密) exposed the lies of the cabinet department which hadcovered up the bird influenza H5N2 epidemic. Following this first year
onwards, recommendations for nominations were taken from monthly

After the year 2000, the popularization of the internet meant that owning or working for a newspaper or TV Station ceased to be a precondition for journalistic activity, and this led to new developments within
the press discourse. A movement exploring new possibilities for investigative journalism emerged online, in response to that stagnation
mentioned above of interest within the existing media environment, utilizing the interactivity of the internet, without introducing the market
fundamentalism for which the mainstream media had long faced thecriticism. In April 2011, media researchers Shih-hung LO and Yuan-huei
HU rose as pioneers to found the Better Press Development Committee(優質新聞發展協會). In December of the same year, they started up a platform called weReport, which would seek to connect those with suggestions for particular investigations with a donation collection service tofund those projects.
WeReport is a platform that introduces the concept of crowdsourcing
to the idea of public commissioning, encouraging the public to suggest
themes for an investigative report, for which it would raise financial resources through crowd-funding, leading to the research and publicationof that commissioned work. Its ideas and format were based mostly on
America’s first crowd-funded journalism site called Spot. Us.3
WeReport holds a slogan of “you support, we report” and has a system
whereby any civilian who is interested in investigative journalism andhas the desire to act on this can make suggestions, exchange opinions
and give support. Incidentally, there is a provision in their terms andconditions that any journalist belonging to an existing media outlet
cannot be a recipient for donations. The weReport management committee does not carry out screenings on whether the contents of a suggested theme should be adopted. They are only providing an essential
formal screening and their position on said theme, always entrusting80

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the final decision and selection of topics to its users, as a basic rule. Also,
other than managing the platform, weReport holds lectures on investigative reporting and workshops on research, intending to provide experience and knowledge to the general public to establish a circulation ofjournalistic education.
When weReport founded, the central role was fulfilled by what might
be called a group of specialists, such as academics, students, and journalists, who were highly aware of the media’s problems and strongly desired its reform.4 However, as one of those core members, Lih-yun LIN,
pointed out, gaining the sympathy of ordinary citizens and people fromdifferent walks of life, and getting them to participate, was a significant
objective. Although they had 21 theme suggestions, 19 completed works,
and gathered 2.6 million NTD (New Taiwan Dollars, around $86,500) in
contributions in their first-year (CHEN, Yi-shing 陳宜欣 2015), approximately 90 percent of these themes are from freelance journalists, andstudents belonging to media studies departments, with the project
still showing not much progress in spreading engagement to those civilians outside these professions (LIN, Lih-yun 林麗雲 2012). Looking at
the situation regarding the contributions collected, contributions frommedia affiliates (such as journalists, media researchers, students inmedia-related departments) made up over 65% during this early phase.
However, the situation started to change as the aforementioned independent journalist, Kevin H. J. LEE became the focus of public attention.
Because he had also gathered production funds through weReport, thepercentage of contributions from ordinary civilians and groups reachedover 50% by 2012. Two years after its foundation, there were a total of 30
theme suggestions, and by the 3rd year, this had increased to 57. Now, in
May of 2018, there are a total of 83 suggestions spanning topics such aspolitics, the environment, agriculture, workers, law, the media, humanrights, and education.
Moreover, they have received contributions from a total of over 1518
people. WeReport could still do more regarding its scope and current
level of recognition in society, with many points that require improvement regarding its method of publicizing and publishing completed
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works. So far, weReport showed the society its existential value as follows: it has built up a cyclical model of positive reinforcement, connecting those who submit problems (themes) with people who sharethe same interest, and to produce works aimed at civil society while
cementing a relationship of trust in the form of support.
2 The history of Taiwanese media and the changes within

Taiwanese society
The previous sections have briefly examined the history of investigative
reporting and those recent developments within the profession. The following will focus on the media environment in Taiwan and the elementsof Taiwanese society from which this type of investigative journalism
has emerged. Here, we will examine the results of the democratizationand liberation of media that occurred after the 80s, the media reform,
and its enactment through social movements.
2-1 The light and darkness of democratization and liberation

Following colonial rule by Japan and the post-war single-party government, the first signs of democratization finally appeared in Taiwanesesociety in 1987. The event which most symbolized this was the liftingof martial law. This change to the political structure also had a significant impact on broadcast media. Specifically, there was a moveto legalize pirate radio and underground cable television stations, inaddition to making legal preparations for the introduction of several
new radios, cable television, and satellite broadcasts. Thus, the voicesof anti-government factions and minority peoples openly broadcasted
their voices on-air for the first time. Concerning terrestrial broadcasts,
Formosa Television (FTV) was founded by supporters of the Democratic
Progressive Party to join the three other established broadcasters, setting up a competition, and providing an alternative to the media discourse previously dominated by the KMT.
Moreover, with the establishment of PTS in 1998, it is also the era ofdemocratization of media discourse and liberation of the media industry in the 80s and 90s. Furthermore, upon entering the 2000s, reforms
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were made to remove the influence of parties, the government, and themilitary from the management of terrestrial television. The National
Communications Commission (NCC) was established as an independent government body to supervise the broadcast communication
services. Television channels for ethnic minorities such as the Taiwan
Indigenous Television and Hakka TV emerged, and, following the 90s,
the Taiwanese media environment partly realized the public-oriented
reform of the media. The media environment made efforts to escapeauthoritarian control while laying out a media space in which various
channels, various languages, and political objections could freely express (LIN, I-hsuan 林怡蕿 2014).
However, although it might have appeared as if the broadcast media
of Taiwan was being freed from its adhesion to the political authorities of yesteryear through such institutional and structural reforms, inreality, the political authorities started to manipulate the liberation of
the media market place. They used their massive economic capital toinfiltrate the management of media in more devious ways, ultimately
coming to influence the very being of the media.
With the move towards neo-liberalism, print and broadcast media
in Taiwan became intricately intertwined with political and economic
powers as it pursued its endless expansion. Some phenomena exemplify
this, including the polarization of political discourse, in addition to theentertainment-focused, trivial and sensationalist contents of news reports, and in recent years, the fabrication of news stories, and severe
breaches of privacy. All this, combined with facile reporting methods
like articles consisting entirely of footage from SNS or vehicle-mounted
cameras, are becoming more mainstream. Many of these incidents are
not only a major problem concerning journalistic ethics and standards,
but also undermine the actual value in the very idea of journalism itself.
Furthermore, the media discourse in Taiwan has another distinguishing characteristic. That is the friction between ideas surrounding national identity and ethnic identity that originated from Taiwan’s unique
historical circumstances. The former is the conflict between Chinese
nationalism and Taiwanese nationalism over the issue of independence
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or unification regarding political and diplomatic relations with China,
specifically, the KMT’s support for unification and the Democratic
Progressive Party’s support for independence. The latter is the reaffirmation of ethnic identity around a central question of “What am I?
Chinese or Taiwanese?”
Furthermore, the democratization reconstructed an ethnic order
within Taiwanese society that acknowledges the existence of the Hakka
people and other indigenous peoples as a minority. Most political arguments or statements, including media broadcasts, are structured
around these points of conflict concerning national and ethnic identity, resulting in the polarization of Taiwanese society. Although, on the
one hand, democratization and liberation did grant an opportunity toopen up society and the media, on the other hand, it caused contradictions and oppositions rooted in the very depths of Taiwanese society tosurface, creating a society divided by those different forms of nationalism. Cases often occur wherein various media outlets, which ought tobe acting as bridges between these camps, instead deepen the divide by
sticking to specific standpoints.
2-2 The media recession and the public’s distrust

If the 90s were a period of reorganization for the media order of Taiwan,
then the 2000s onwards could be said to be a period of expansion andintensifying competition in the media marketplace. From the 2000s
onwards, investment funds and foreign capital, as well as capital fromdifferent industries, gained ground in the ownership of print and broadcast media one after the other and moves to acquire, merge, and groupmedia corporations appeared to accelerate. The founding family of
China Times, one of the four essential papers of Taiwan, acquired China
Television, China Radio, and the Central Picture Corporation formerly
owned by CTi TV and KMT. In 2007, they formed the China Times Group
controlling printed and broadcast media. However, in 2008, due to unprofitable operations, they were acquired by the WantWant Holdings
Limited, a major food-stuffs corporation, based in China, changing theirname to the WantWant China Times Group (旺旺中時集團). It was the85

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first acquisition of a media organization by a firm from a different sector
in the history of Taiwanese media.
Furthermore, in 2010, the WantWant China Times Group planned
to expand its media territory further by venturing to acquire a major
cable TV company, China Network Systems. However, the WantWant
China Times Group owner’s pro-China bias and strongly interventionist stance on media management had aroused some concerns. Many
citizens showed their fears that this acquisition would mean a monopolization of the media by the WantWant China Times Group. In 2012, antiacquisition movements associated with media researchers, as well as
nongovernment organizations, like the Taiwan Journalists Association,
alongside student groups from various universities held an anti-mediamonopolization demonstration, and many citizens took to the streets.
These protests from the public were successful, at least in part, and in
2013, the NCC passed a verdict stating that this acquisition would not
get permission under anti-trust regulations.
Meanwhile, mergers and acquisitions are occurring in cable TV as
well. In 2013, an established firm controlling over 30 percent of the market shares announced its acquisition by Next TV, a Hong Kong-based
firm that had gained ground in Taiwan. Furthermore, there was an incident in 2015, where over 60 percent of the stocks to the major cable
TV company, the Eastern Broadcasting Company, was acquired by theaffiliate of a Chinese company. Many citizens have raised their voices
in concern about the influence that Chinese institutions can exert overTaiwanese media and public discourse. Through the process of mergers and acquisitions, the Taiwanese Media is in the hands of fewer andfewer entities, in contrast to the superficial variety of its ever-expanding
channel listings.
Within the backdrop of the mergers and acquisitions described above,lies the media’s current financial state brought about by the continual
shrinking of advertising revenue. According to the data for the first halfof 2016, the advertising revenue for media organizations as a wholestands at 18 billion NTD (around $595.3 million), a 12.5% reduction fromthe previous year. Both print (newspapers, magazines) and broadcast(radio, terrestrial TV, cable TV) media were showing a downward trend.5
In particular, printed media have shown the most significant decrease,
dropping 20 percent overall. By contrast, the advertising revenue for internet media has been increasing exponentially, and by the second halfof 2016, it had already surpassed that of broadcast media as a whole.6
To survive from limited advertising revenue, many media outlets haveseen reporters made redundant and departments reduced in scope. In
contrast, the actual content of news reports has changed, with sensationalist journalism, which often produces the most sales, becoming
the mainstream. This phenomenon, coupled with the widespread use ofa technique known as stealth marketing, promotes anything from specific politicians and government bodies to public events, making fairly
frequent appearances, often on the front page.
Thus, through their daily exposure to these phenomena, the polarization of politics, the concentration of media ownership, and increased
sensationalism within journalism, the people of Taiwan have developed
a deep distrust for traditional media. In 2016, according to a survey 7
by CommonWealth Magazine, the ordinary citizen’s trust in journalists was the second-lowest compared to all other professions (the firstbeing judges), with 58.3%. They were answering “no trust, extreme lackof trust”. Back in 2009, with a survey 8 by researchers targeting citizens
aged 20 years or older, the answers showed that 60.2% of the respondents “do not trust” the media as a whole. Furthermore, in response to
the question, “Political information reported by the media is worthy ofinterest”, the percentage stating “disagree” was 47.3%. In response to thequestion, “Political information reported by the media can be trusted”,
81.8% indicated a response of “disagree.”On the other hand, in response to the question, “political bureaucrats
and lawyers care about the political information reported by the media”,
64.8% answered, “agree.” In response to the question, “Political information reported by the media is often under the influence of political parties and financial groups,” the results revealed that 79.9% would “agree.”From these results, one can observe how the media is closely tied topolitical/economic power, the furthest thing from civil society.

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2-3 The flourishing of social movements andthe emergence of new internet news media
There is a movement within civil society, which voices this mistrust andcriticism of that deterioration in the media landscape, proactively calling for reform. Social movements and NGOs with the aim of reforming the media began to appear in large numbers within Taiwan fromthe 90s onwards. To divide them broadly, they can be those calling for
an improvement in the contents of press reports and those calling forstructural reform of the media environment as a whole. Examples of theformer are the Taiwan Media Watch (台灣媒體觀察教育基金會) (establishedin 1999, the ‘founded’ will omit henceforth), and the Audience Media
Watch Union (閱聽人媒體監督聯盟, 2003). The latter are media NGOs in
which reporters and others involved in the industry are its main constituents. In 1994, following an issue around the transfer of managerial
control over the Independent Evening Post (自立晚報), journalists began
street demonstrations demanding the editorial department’s right tofreedom within the research and editing process. They then went on to
found the Taiwan Journalists Association the following year, advocating
for the protection of freedom of the press and the rights of journalists asworkers. Others such as the Solidarity of Communication Students (傳播學生鬥陣, 1994), Terrestrial TV Democratisation Union (無線電視民主化聯盟, 2000), The Campaign for Media Reform (媒體改造學社, 2003) demonstrate on the streets, open workshops, release studies, and publish electronic journals and books to publicize their opinions. While continuingtalks with the media industry, working to rouse and gather awarenessfor media reform within society, they have also made some vital contributions in amending legislative policies relating to the media (LIN,
I-hsuan 林怡蕿 2014).
Driving these voices for media reform are media researchers, students, and journalists. The universities and graduate schools of Taiwan,
which are enthusiastic about delivering specialist education in media,
not only research and analyze media activities but also function as bases
for social movements, actively working towards social reform from theirposition in the academic world. Furthermore, there has been a traditionof university students serving the lead role in political counter-movements and social reform movements from the 90s onwards, with examples including, the Anti-media-monopolisation Demonstration (反媒體壟斷運動 2012), the Sunflower Student Movement (太陽花運動 2014) andthe Highschool History Textbooks Revision Opposition Movement (反高中課綱微調運動 2014). In accompaniment to the flourishing of such social
movements, alternative media has asserted a significant presence.
The history of alternative media within post-war Taiwan can be dated
back to the non-party-political magazines of the 50s and the pirate radio
and underground TV stations of the 80s. Now, online media is becoming mainstream. According to the result of research done in 2017, thenumber of people connected to the internet via broadband has reached
18 million and 790 thousand, accounting for more than 80% of the total
population.9 From the websites, electronic reports, and blogs from the
90s to the SNS of recent times, individuals and organizations are posting, swapping opinions, and exchanging information about social issues
through these various forms of online media. For example, Coolloud (苦勞網) is a news media site operated by political activists that highlightissues surrounding ethnic minorities and the exploitation of their labor.
News & Market (上下游新聞市集), a self-sustaining media outlet focusing
on agricultural issues, supports its news department with the sales of
its agricultural produce. There are many others, like 88news (莫拉克獨立新聞網) dedicated to following victims of typhoons as well as the restoration and rebuilding of their local areas, or the university-based Vita.
tw (生命力新聞), and the Environment Report (環境報導) which is run by
freelance journalists. These are all representative cases. Some combine
filmed and written contributions on their platform, like the PTS’s Peopo
Citizen Journalism (Peopo 公民新聞), providing on the ground reports
from the perspective of those directly involved.
Regarding SNS, too, with the recent rapid popularization of Facebook,10 there have been many cases where individuals and groups haveexerted a surprisingly significant influence on society because of theease with which social media allows them to communicate. During
the Sunflower Student Movement of 2014, several graduate students,

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dissatisfied with the mainstream media’s one-sided and negative portrayal of the movement, started posting report articles on the NTU EForum (台大新聞 E 論壇) page on Facebook. They started to communicate real situation on the ground, producing articles with their computers on the streets at the scene of the protests and performed theediting and fact-checking process as a group. They provided a constantstream of articles and film footage daily. This reporting on the NTU EForum was a spontaneous act of journalism by a total of 90 civilians
with university students as its main constituent. Over 22 days, it managed to produce a total of 1234 articles, acquiring around 125 thousand
followers. The social and technological foundations that make up thissort of spontaneous journalistic activity by members of the public,
and its acceptance by the public at large, are coming to characterize
journalism in the modern era.
Meanwhile, other than those volunteer-based nonprofit operations
mentioned above, there has been a glut of professional news sites, calledinternet-specialist media outlets, appearing one after the other in thelast few years (YAMADA 山田 2017). To trace this back, it was the appearance of Tomorrow Times (明日報) in 2000 that kickstarted the age of news
websites that distributed solely through the medium of the internet.
However, it suspended publication due to financial difficulties after only
a year. New Talk appeared in 2009, with hard-hitting news as its selling
point. However, now, it has transformed into a general internet media
outlet that also delivers soft news with sections on entertainment, food,and travel. On top of this, in recent years, sites like The Storm Media(風傳媒), Up Media (上報) and CMMEDIA (信傳媒) have emerged one after
the other, indicating the arrival of a new competitive era amongst theseinternet-only media outlets. Many of these have hired experienced staff
from existing media-outlets in an attempt to bring professionalism tomedia reporting on the internet. Most of these sites are dependent on
financing from their founders as well as advertising revenue, and eachstill has many hurdles to clear to build a stable business.

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3 The Reporter amid trial and error and the meaning that imparts
Regarding the changes to the state of social activism and the media in
Taiwan mentioned above, it is clear that the existing media alone has
been unable to fulfill civil society’s need for knowledge. Alternative online news outlets and journalism focused NGOs arose to fill that void.
Although these media activities are all small in scope, they are growing
into something whose social influence is increasing. In this same fashion, The Reporter emerged as a novel type of media outlet, specializing
in investigative journalism and, founded on the belief that they could
not see a future for such investigative journalism in a business model
swayed by the demands of the market, chose the nonprofit path.
3-1 Fiscal resources, Taiwan’s culture of donation

The Reporter took its first steps on the 1st of September 2015 (Journalist
Day in Taiwan), and it officially came online in December of the same year.
Serving as its founder and first editor-in-chief is the veteran newspaper
reporter Jungshin HO. He is someone who has held posts at the Liberty
Times, China Times, and CommonWealth Magazine, having also served as
the first chairperson of the Taiwan Journalists Association in 1995, andas a lecturer at the Graduate Institute of Journalism in National Taiwan
University. He boasts a career of over 28 years and counting and has
released a large body of work during his life as a reporter. When he wasan associate editor at China Times, he led the Investigative Journalism
Section, which received multiple awards for its works of investigative
journalism. During his tenure at CommonWealth Magazine, he founded
and ran an internet press platform called CommonWealth@Independent
Review (天下＠獨立評論) which was supported by the company to operate
without being dependent on advertising revenue. Seeing the phenomenon of the modern youth moving away from newspapers, he had theacute realization that talking to a new generation required new media.
As he had always questioned the media’s current business model of advertising revenue as the primary fiscal resource, feeling that this model
was reaching its limit, he chose the path of founding The Reporter. His
ideal model was that of the American nonprofit media outlet dedicated91The Reporter of Taiwan

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to investigative journalism, ProPublica.
Using the organizational model of a nonprofit, The Reporter madedonations its only source of funding. As maintaining the most minimal
structure would require an estimated annual working fund of around30 million NTD (around $998,240), Mr. HO first consulted Mr. Tzu-hsien
TUNG, a Taiwanese businessman, during the preparatory phase of foundation. Though Mr. TUNG is the president of a company that producescomputer and mobile phone hardware, he is a figure who is very enthusiastic about the promotion of Taiwanese literature and artistic
activities. He has involved in the funding of and investment in literaryarts associated groups over many years. With experience serving as atrustee to PTS, he is a supporter of media and culture. Mr. TUNG sympathized with the founding principles of The Reporter and agreed to
donate 20 million NTD (around $665,500) for its running costs, every
year for the first three years. He has given more than this, and looking at
the published documents for 2017; there are records of a further 10-million-NTD (around $332,250) donation. Having given out such a colossal
amount in donations, Mr. TUNG implemented a ‘Three Nos Principle’of “no ownership, no intervention, no collection” regarding the administration and internal management of The Reporter. In other words,
it is the general principle of not seeing The Reporter as something heowns, not intervening in its management or research and editing process, and not wanting any return in the form of profits. The principle
later became the basic rule for whenever The Reporter accepts any
donations. Furthermore, procedures to accept donations over 1 million NTD (around $33,225) is to gain the agreement from the donation
screening team of The Reporter Cultural Foundation, the parent company to The Reporter.
To follow those as mentioned earlier, ‘Three Nos Principle’, Mr. TUNG
completely retreated to the background, not serving as a trustee orauditor in The Reporter Cultural Foundation, not recommending any
staff he liked to the editorial office of The Reporter, and so on. It is because there were significant, high-profile donors like Mr. TUNG that The
Reporter was able to take its very first steps as a nonprofit media outlet.

However, thinking about it in the long term, the major problem to be
tackled, upon constructing a stable administrative base, is how to increase the donations from the general public rather than depending on
specific large-scale fiscal resources.
As a foothold in contemplating that possibility, here we will touchupon Taiwan’s donation culture to refer to it in the context of considering the social-economic resources that can utilize in supporting nonprofit media outlets.
The most well-known fact about donations by the ordinary citizensof Taiwan, from recent times, is that over 6.85 billion NTD (around$22,793,065) in contributions made by them for the Great East Japan
Earthquake of 2011. The image of the Taiwanese people enthusiasticallydonating in response to an extraordinary disaster that had occurred ina neighboring country leaves a profound impression, but how much
has that donation culture permeated into their everyday lives? First,
to focus on the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF)’s World Giving Index
2017,11 which surveyed in 140 countries around the world. Looking at
the results gained from the question, “Have you done any the following in the past month: 1) Helped a stranger or someone you did notknow who needed help? 2) Donated money to a charity? 3) Volunteered
your time to an organization?”, Taiwan ranked 52nd out of the 140 (asan aside, Korea ranked 62nd and Japan 111th).12 Looking specifically at
donations to charity, Taiwan ranked 39th, Korea 31st, and Japan 46th.
On a global scale, it is not a bad result belonging within the top onethird, the same as Korea. However, it can also be interpreted as a country where donations are not of exceptional frequency. Now let us look atsurveys within Taiwan itself. According to the results of a 2003 national
survey13 published by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting
and Statistics (Taiwan’s bureau of statistics, 主計處), around 6 million
people had the recollection of making donations of money within thepast year, meaning that about 1 in 4 of the population had donated. In
fact, according to survey results published by United Way Taiwan14 in
2011, it could be understood that more than 80% of the subjects of theirsurvey had made donations in the past year, with an average amount92

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donated sitting at around one hundred USD. Looking at the latest survey results15 done by an academic institution in 2015, 67% of the subjects surveyed had a recollection of donating, of which 56% had donatedto a charity. Furthermore, according to the calculations16 of a nongovernment organization that monitors the management of charity groups,
the total annual amount of donations within Taiwan was over 50 billion
NTD (around $166,372,750), making up about 0.37% of the GDP. We cansay that a culture of individuals donating to improve society or help thevulnerable, instead of leaving such matters to the government, has permeated into Taiwanese society to some degree. People’s willingness todonate acts as the driving force that instantly gathers supplies and aid
when a major disaster or social disturbance occurs.
Also, during the Sunflower Student Movement of 2014, a large amountof equipment, food, drink, and daily commodities was donated by citizens and gathered on the scene in a short period. The support fromcitizens was becoming the resources through which the movement prolonged its resistance; it is the power of donations from citizens cannot
be ignored concerning protesting against political authority or enacting
social reform.
Concerning whether this power of donation can extend to the media
sector, below will examine a new example CivilMedia@TW (公民行動影音紀錄資料庫). The CivilMedia@TW is an alternative media outlet that records footage of social movements to encourage civilian involvement.
Although it initially set up as a government research project, in 2014,
it became an independent corporation and began operating with donations from citizens for funding. It currently requires around 160–200
thousand NTD (around $5,325–$6,655) per month to fund the labor costsof reporters and particular contract writers, travel expenses, office rent,
petty expenses, and the like. Despite facing several occasions of funding
shortages, it has just about managed through large and small-scale donations from supporters as well as through volunteer assistance. Today,
they are still putting every effort into reporting and recording from thescene of social movements, maintaining their reputation as a media
outlet, which represents the perspective of those involved. These efforts

were acknowledged, and it was given Best Social & Public Institution
Award in 2017 by the Excellent Journalism Award Foundation. This example can be an outstanding example for showing that a small-scale
nonprofit media outlet dependent on financial support from the publicalone can go just about work. However, when compared to America or
Europe, it is evident that there is still more room for improvement.
As previously stated, The Reporter funded by large donations froma specific businessman, as well as donations from minor businesses
amounting to around 5 million NTD (around $166,375) and muchsmaller individual contributions from members of the public, providing
an annual budget of 30 million NTD (around $998,240). Small-scale donations from readers are into two types, a periodic contribution wherea fixed sum of money is drawn from a specified account every monthand one-time-only non-periodic contributions. Currently, the periodic
contributions are at 300 thousand NTD (around $9,982) a month andcombined with non-periodic contributions of around 1 million 400
thousand NTD (around $46,585). Small-scale donations from readers
have reached 5 million NTD (around $166,375) a year, growing to thepoint where it is one-sixth of the total budget. When facing the 4th year
onwards, increasing the proportion of donations by the public is still
the primary goal. Both the editor-in-chief, Mr. HO, and the editorial
managing director, Ms. Sherry Lee, have stated that to do this: “the only
way is to increase the quality of reporting to gain support from an evengreater number of citizens.” Can the general public in Taiwan provide
long-term support for nonprofit investigative journalism through individual small-scale donations? Perhaps that possibility lies hidden somewhere within Taiwan, where 1 in 4 people make donations every year.
On this matter, Mr. HO has stated that while he is not overly optimistic,
nor is he despairing.

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3-2 The management structure of nonprofit media organizations

The administrative parent company to The Reporter is The Reporter
Cultural Foundation (henceforth shortened to Cultural Foundation),and there is an unusual combination of trustees within the Cultural

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Foundation. It including university professors, social entrepreneurs,
business people, internet media specialists, documentary directors, andfreelance journalists. The Cultural Foundation is tasked with managing the operation of The Reporter yet holds a policy of not interfering
in its research and editing process. The Reporter has a total of 27 staff
members, with an office on the 6th floor of a building in Taipei City. It
is a small office with computer desks and mountains of documents filling every available spot. However, one whole wall is glass-sided, so thebright sunlight illuminates the room interior, and the general atmosphere is cheerful.
When it first founded, it consisted of just a few veteran reporters frommainstream media outlets, freelance journalists, and some younger
graduates gathered in a single room. Its beginning started with an unexpected incident: they had sent out a recruitment notice for reporters
and received a rush of applications from over 400 people. Though they
could only hire ten people for budgetary reasons, they secured somewriters from among the applicants, to write articles on individual contracts, so that they could secure a plurality of perspectives. The Reporter
technically has a structure akin to the traditional framework of a news
organization with a management body (editor-in-chief, deputy editorin-chief, editorial managing director), the heads of each department,
and their staff. However, in practice, the management and heads of departments are not absolute authorities, and most decisions about its research and operations are reached in the form of debates and votes at aweekly general meeting, making it closer to a communal organizational
structure. Particularly during the early stages following its foundation,
there were many instances where general meeting rejected something
decided by the management meeting, and such clashes and concessions between the staff were commonplace.
Given that it was The Reporter with high ideals and a strong senseof self-expression that gathered in this nonprofit media outlet, debates around differing opinions were frequent. There were even somedisagreements that almost destroyed the unity of the organization.
However, it can say that a certain level of shared understanding has

established because they underwent this process. This sort of communal organizational structure and system of building up opinions could
be considered characteristic of such early stages within the foundationof an alternative media outlet or any new organization. However, positive effects for the development and maintenance of the organization
can last from an environment wherein members can exchange theiropinions and divide work more freely without being restricted by hierarchy and pecking order.
Besides, the average young age is another distinguishing feature of
The Reporter. Mr. HO, the editor-in-chief, is the oldest, being in his 50s,
others are recent alumni from graduate school in their 20s, and a mainstay of the journalists are those in their 30s and 40s. Each provides theirgenerational perspective, all acutely attuned to the various phenomena
affecting Taiwanese society, such as labor issues, racial discrimination,and cultural changes. For the younger generations, this involves carrying out their research, with a certain sense of self-reflection on the sortof society that they will see emerge in the future.

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3-3 The investigative journalism of The Reporter

In Taiwan, investigative journalism is often used synonymously with theterm “in-depth reporting.” However, as the editorial managing director,
Ms. Sherry Lee, has stated, there is a significant difference between thetwo based on whether “certain people are intentionally attempting tohide certain facts.”17 Many journalists of her ilk possess journalistic
sensibility that “something is being hidden,” carrying out the responsibilities without satisfied in merely pursuing the roots of a fact or problem. Instead, they firmly face up to the fact that the fabrications andlies concocted by the authorities and hidden therein can torment themost vulnerable. Indeed, almost all feature journalism and independent reporting ever produced has carried this perspective that places
the people at its starting point upon considering the issues surrounding
institutions, the environment, or the society they produce. This style ofreporting puts it closer to the citizens and those who experience these issues, and it distinguishes itself from the work of the mainstream media.

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At its outset, The Reporter’s homepage composed of a straightforward design that intended to deliver visual impact, with a photographon the whole screen and the headlines above it. It has now installed
space for columns and reader comments alongside the articles, linking the contents of these columns and articles, as a way to present thereader with a diverse set of perspectives on reports and opinions.
With the number and format of articles becoming more substantialfrom the second year onwards, a multi-media corner, a corner for photographic and video reporting, were newly established alongside thatbasic style of a headline and photograph. From the third year onwards,
the sorting and listing of editors’ picks and article categories became
more optimized with lists of related articles. Besides, active effort tointroduce multi-media techniques, with footage, CG graphs, data, photographs, and the like achieved to explain the complexities within thecontents of specific policies, or the state of specific institutions, in a waythat is easy to understand. It aims to gain the readership of readers who
avoid long texts and readers who want to save time.
Besides, something that left a significant impact on the media industry from the first year was the introduction of news games. For example; “If I Were the Doctor at An Emergency Centre,” a game in which thereader can experience how busy doctors at emergency centers are, wasincorporated into the medical feature, “Emergency Life – The Collapseof the Emergency Centre, the Medical Dilemma of Taiwan that You
Should Know About.” It designed to allow a simulated experience of issues that the doctors at emergency centers face every day, such as staff
shortages, violence from patients and their families, and the wastage of
medical resources, from the standpoint of those involved. It aimed toform an awareness within the reader that the crisis in the medical field
was “not somebody else’s business,” guiding the reader further into themain text of the report.
Regarding the aspect of interactive communication with the readers,
there is a mechanism that collects the reader’s assessment of government policies. The Big Platform to Track Tsai Ing-wen’s Labor Policy,
which inspected the labor policies of president TSAI Ing-wen, wasannounced on the 1st of May 2017, in the lead up to the anniversary of
the president’s inauguration. It carried out a thorough examination of
the 18 items of labor policy championed by president TSAI, setting out
several criteria ranging from “fully realized,” “partially realized,” “policy
collapsed,” to “no movement yet.” Journalists would perform the examination, having publicized how they tracked the labor policy and thedetails of their measurement criteria. At the same time, the readers
could respond to that with opinions and criticisms as well as carry out
a Satisfaction Rating (five stars being the best rating) for each policy.
As a result of the examination, it became apparent that, of the 18 items,
only 1 item had been fully realized, demonstrating a significant disparity between this fact and the government’s announcement claiming tohave completed five items.
The article categories of The Reporter, currently approaching their
third year, are mainly based around these six sections: Human rights
and society, Environment and education, Culture and art, Politics andeconomics, International and cross-strait (i.e., relations with China),
Life-style and medical.
The Reporter periodically arranges events in which to interact
with the readership and other citizens outside of its journalistic profession. During that initial year, it held a “Who is The Reporter?” lecture tour around various regions of Taiwan, communicating the idea
and endeavor behind The Reporter to build up a certain level of basesupport through proximity conversations with readers. Furthermore,
The Reporter opened journalist training workshops, radio talks by theeditor-in-chief, to talk about the hidden side of social issues and theperspectives on those issues that they have come to see through theirresearch and the points that audiences should know.
It also works on secondary uses for its content by compiling a database of photographic images, as well as by printing paper editions of
its articles. An article which tackled the issue of a stateless child bornto a female migrant worker from Southeast Asia in August 2016, wasawarded the Excellence of Human Rights Reporting Award by SOPA anda picture book based on that story, called Transparent Kids published

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On the 19th of December 2016, The Reporter published its first annualfeature, Fraud, Exploitation, Bloods, and Tears of Fishing. This feature
was a project that took half a year to complete from when the topic
first appeared. It is a large-scale report, composed of five long articles(with one additional publication on January 2017) combining CG graphs,
audio-visual elements, and photographs.
It began with the accidental death of an Indonesian worker aboard
a fishing vessel. The journalists had doubts about the narrative that hehad died from an apparent illness just a little over three months after
being hired to set sail on a Taiwanese open sea fishing vessel. In theirsearch for the truth, the research team frequented fishing ports aroundvarious parts of Taiwan and traveled to Indonesia, diligently questioning anyone involved. Upon minutely analyzing all relevant information,
like footage filmed on a mobile phone several days before the man’s
death, records of the autopsy, the testimony of those other workers, andthe prosecutor’s report, death by abuse emerged as a distinct possibility. Moreover, this, in turn, uncovered an inconvenient truth about the
open sea fishing industry of Taiwan, worth nearly 1.23 billion USD per
year, containing over 1650 open sea fishing vessels, which employedcountless workers of Indonesian nationality hired on low wages underunjust contracts. Though there were no records of the precise numbers,
there were around 40 thousand workers of Indonesian nationality holdfalse sailor identifications and proofs of skill acquired by bribing government offices. They had been processed through 2 or 3 levels of mediation by middle-men between their home country and Taiwan. These
Indonesian workers work according to an unjust contract, aboard

vessels where physical punishment and abuse were a daily routine. The
research team reported this embodiment of “modern slavery,” detailingits conditions based on solid proof and testimonies, backed up by the
meticulous collection of supporting evidence.
Furthermore, they did not stop at merely reporting on the victims
who would quickly draw out the readers’ sympathy but also studied thecourse that the Taiwanese open sea fishing industry had charted before
reaching its current state. For example, the global issue of IUU fishing
operations, the neglect by administrative government bodies that lie
behind it, the severe shortage of fishing talent and labor in the field, as
well as the structural problems facing the industry as a whole. With theresearch team interviewing a wide range of those involved such as the
Taiwan Fisheries Agency, former captains, chief engineers, scientific observers, fishers, and workers, searching far and wide for a vast amount ofdata. Through such sequences of reporting, they delivered a story about
the people made victim to the lies of the administrative bureaucracies
and callous middle-men, thereby ringing an alarm bell for society.
The fact that the seafood we eat in our daily meals as consumers werefrom fishing vessels aboard on which Indonesian workers were treatedas slaves left a profound impression on many readers. The efforts of The
Reporter had resonated with them. In the three days after the publication of the report, The Reporter received 200 thousand NTD (around$6655) in donations and acquired around 60 new periodical contributors. “It was unexpected since we did not think we would gather more
donations just because the report was published” reflects the editorial
managing director, Ms. Sherry Lee. She says the experience surprised
her, that support would come flying from somewhere in society when
they put out a good report. At the same time, it also inspired a sense of
responsibility that they needed to live up to these expectations.
In 2017, the product of this first large-scale investigation, Fraud, Exploitation, Bloods, and Tears of Fishing won the Award for Excellencefrom the Hong Kong-based Society of Publishers in Asia, SOPA, in boththe human rights reporting category and the investigative reporting category. Also, in the same year, Before Departure: The Taiwanese

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in February 2017. Besides, the results of the international collaborative
investigation discussed in the next section published in May 2017, under
the title, Fraud, Exploitation, Bloods, and Tears of Fishing (造假 剝削 血淚漁場) with an even more significant expansion to its contents. At thispoint, of May 2018, The Reporter has published a total of 46 individualfeature articles.
3-4 The annual feature and international collaborative investigation

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results than expected due to events like a supervisory auditor of theControl Yuan (監察院)20 distributing pamphlets of the Fraud, Exploitation, Bloods and Tears of Fishing articles during deliberations in a national assembly before going on to question the head of the associatedadministrative body.

Dream of Indonesian Fishermen, which used CG images and text, won a
Human Rights Award in Hong Kong for the Chinese Multi-Media Award.
In November 2017, it won the Investigative Report Award at Taiwan’s
Excellent Journalism Award. Its resplendent record of awards within
Chinese-speaking countries testifies to the favorable estimation of its
efforts by experts in the field.
One of the critical factors that allowed this Fraud, Exploitation,
Bloods and Tears of Fishing feature to succeed was the collaborative
research done with Indonesia’s local media. The starting point for thisinternational collaborative investigation, which could be considereda first in the history of investigative journalism within Taiwan, was a
meeting that the editorial managing director Ms. Sherry Lee had at the
GIJN (Global Investigative Journalism Network). This international network supports investigative journalism-related activities. Ms. Lee first
met Philipus Parera, the editor-in-chief of Indonesia’s Tempo Magazine,
at GIJN’s Asia investigative reporting conference in Nepal in September
2016, where the two exchanged information and opinions, and she managed to gain agreement on a later international collaborative investigation. Journalists from Tempo Magazine went to Taiwan and reported thesituation in the workplace by interviewing the workers at fishing ports
in Indonesian. Furthermore, through the efforts of the Tempo side, it
was made possible for journalists from The Reporter to interview public administrators in Central Java and Indonesia. Thus, by both sides
building a system for international collaborative investigations, they
were each able to report in ways that made full use of their particularperspectives.
In January 2017, Tempo Magazine published the result of their research as the feature Slavery at Sea: Human Bondage aboard Fishing
Boats,18 inciting a tremendous response. One of its achievements was
the Indonesian government punishing 40, 50 illegal middle-men andlaunching a review to reform the authority responsible for the issuingof visas. Meanwhile, the feature article by The Reporter was able toreach the eyes of more readers by being published on the Apple Daily,19a major newspaper within Taiwan. It achieved more influence andAs stated above, in the two years up to 2017, The Reporter had experimented with various angles and formats, starting with annual featuresand features, providing a critical and introspective perspective, extending to think pieces, data journalism, news games, footage, and photograph features. It had built up a stable level of acclaim amongst its
readers, and looking at the Facebook page of The Reporter, by that point
in June 2017, it had received more than 200 thousand followers, with arating that was very close to 5 stars. It looked as if it was steadily gaining
more and more support from its readership. However, in June, an event
occurred that shook the very existence of The Reporter.
It started with the suicide of Miss A, a particular young female author with a mental illness. Miss A was a talented young woman bornto a family of doctors and having entered into medical school with auniversity entrance exam score that was top of the country, therefore,
at a glance, her life might have seemed like that of an elite for whom everything is plain sailing. However, in reality, she had had mental illness
for many years, which forced her to discontinue her studies, and herdays became characterized by a repeated struggle against this illness. In
January 2017, The Reporter picked this up, describing the stigma given
to people with mental illness by society, and the anguish of those suffering such illnesses, within the interview article. After that, Miss A madeher debut as a novelist, and her first work was the story of an intelligent
and beautiful female student being sexually violated by a teacher at her
cram school and then suffering from mental illness. Due to its high similarity to the author’s circumstances, it received much attention fromthe public as the topic of discussion turned to whether elements of thestory might be autobiographical. Then, in April of the same year, and

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without any warning, Miss A committed suicide and died in the middleof the build-up period for her new book. This incident enlivened themass media and the internet media for days on end, developing into asocial incident, receiving an exceptionally high level of attention, withthe “teacher from her cram school,” deemed to be an existing person,and raised as the target for their ire. It even went as far as the Judiciarylaunching an investigation into the matter. In June, under a social atmosphere of “rooting out the culprit who hounded Miss A into suicide,” The
Reporter published interviews with Miss A’s friends and her editor in theform of a reflection on the publication of the novel. Interviews focusedon the issues of Miss A’s contemplations while writing her novel, her
experience of rejection upon searching for a publisher, society’s skepticism towards people with mental illness, and the relationship of trust
between her and her publisher. The account of a particular publisher’s
chief editor B, who refused to publish Miss A’s novel, was treated withanonymity within the article. However, Ms. B’s real name was exposedon the internet, and following an internet firestorm centered aroundattacking her, Ms. B attempted suicide. In the face of such an unanticipated incident, discourses on the internet and mainstream media
turned to criticize The Reporter for publishing the original article. Witha rush of one-star negative reviews on FB, The Reporter began to face
the sort of storm of criticism that wholly denied any value to its work.
As an emergency measure, the editorial staff of The Reporter responded
by releasing an apology statement and deleting parts of the article.
Discussions and reflections about the propriety of treating somethingas anonymous, and guidelines on journalists publicizing their personal
opinions on the internet, were repeated within The Reporter. Manyemotional and insulting voices appeared within this internet firestorm,
and there were only a few comments that calmly distinguished the contents of the article, from the witch hunt that was spreading across theinternet, to appraise the actual article. It is a case that highlights thetrials and tribulations faced by The Reporter, as well as its need to explore the issue of emotional responses taking precedence over reasoned
discussion within various parts of the media. The extent to which it is104

possible to hold logical debates or constructive opinions in that context,
how one might be able to fulfill the role of a rational leader therein, andhow to avoid internet firestorms in the future.
4 The possibility and conditions for the maintenanceof a watchdog media within a democratic society
The echo chamber is a term that describes the condition whereby
people with particular political tendencies and social positions only
access media discussions that reflect their own beliefs. People using
SNS only to interact with those who share their values to gain a senseof security by clicking Like! on each other’s posts. Despite the great variety of information circulated by the advent of online media, this kindof echo chamber phenomenon has become more prominent in recent
years. Indeed, there are many instances where positions and opinions
have been solidified within an echo chamber, with differing perspectives being ignored or removed, resulting in various opinions existingin parallel. At the same time, prejudices and stereotyping take the lead,consequently deepening enmity and misunderstandings over critical social issues. Given the existing tendency of polarized political attitudes within the Taiwanese media environment, this echo chamber
phenomenon centered around SNS and internet media will likely cometo function as an obstructive element upon considering the formationof a shared understanding and consensus within society.
Upon considering the role of a watchdog media within Taiwanesesociety, the modern watchdog media must somehow overcome suchsocial divisions to create either a place where opinions intersect or asystem for exchanging opinions based on rational discourse.
Many of the journalists gathered at The Reporter have always held akeen interest in social movements and minorities. They react acutely tosocial absurdities and the abuse of power, and they have always worked
with the central aim of delivering a blow against social injustice throughtheir articles. Many of their supporters are also sympathetic to thisstance. However, the primary task going forward is to dig up more potential readership, without stopping at those core supporters, broadening
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their base as an investigative journalism outlet that provides rational
debate and collective awareness of social issues. In other words, it must
return to the purest and important origin of journalism as the watchdog
of those in power, to become something that can once again bridge thesocial divisions created by nationalism and varying political positions.
An ideal media outlet should overcome various ideologies and interests
to investigate and report on buried social issues, highlighting those whoare silenced by the mainstream ideology, those people tormented by theomissions and failures of the government institution, and those whosevery existence goes unnoticed. In that sense, The Reporter might be apotential successor and fresh addition to reportage literature from the80s, now within the sphere of the internet.
Besides, many of the issues within our global society do not end at asingle nation. Indeed, there are instances where removing the border ofnational boundaries can allow for a more precise grasp of the problem
at hand, which captures it in its entirety, contributing to the presentation of a more comprehensive perspective for the reader.
The Reporter emerged as an attempt to create a stir in the old reporting principles based on nationalism and ethnopolitics and the statusquo of a media wherein breaking news is the mainstream. It is difficult
to find solutions to all those systematic and journalistic issues within
the Taiwanese media, based on the example set by an online media outlet with a history of just over two and a half years. However, looking
at these attempts to continue pursuing the possibilities of investigative
journalism through nonprofit formats, it seems like this new form of
media and journalism might provide a hint or two to the reconstructionof ideal composition, in which civil society and the media are firm allies.

new: introducing a journalist into the parent company’s board of directors as a representative for the workers. On the 1st of September 2018,
Mr. Jungshin HO, who had simultaneously served two significant roles
as both the chief executive officer of the Cultural Foundation and editorin-chief of The Reporter, left his position as the editor-in-chief to focus
on his work as the chief executive officer. Ms. Sherry Lee, previously theeditorial managing director, took up the mantle of editor-in-chief toserve as his successor. The lead operators of the Cultural Foundationand the editorial office have separated so each can dedicate themselvesto the stable management of the organization and the independenceof the editing process, respectively. These personnel changes occurring
precisely on the third anniversary of The Reporter’s foundation can only
mean that its initial phases of laying the groundwork as a media organization are complete. It will be exciting to see what sort of investigative
journalism the new editorial office might produce following this changing of the guard.

Notes
1. List of Taiwanese Reportage Literature (http://tns.ndhu.edu.tw/~xiangyang/report/about.htm) (access date: 01/05/2018) and C.C. Lin (2006: 237) compiled for reference
2. https://cpj.org/awards/1997/chan.php (access date: 01/05/2018)
3. ‘Spot.Us’ is a crowdfunding journalism site that David Cohn founded in2008 off of 340 thousand dollars in subsidies from the Knight Foundation
News Challenge. It aimed to realize local journalism supported by the citizens of regional communities, and San Francisco was its first base. Though
American Public Media acquired it in 2011, the site later closed in November
2015 due to unprofitable operations.

Addendum
In August 2018, The Reporter Cultural Foundation, the parent company
to The Reporter, held an election to decide its newest board member, as
the result of which, one journalist, Yu-chuan YEH received a recommendation from every member of staff within The Reporter and was elected“journalism director.” “Journalism director” is an attempt at something

4. The funds for the foundation were covered by 1.7 million NTD (around$56,566) from Ms. C.C. LIN (林照真), a media researcher who had started asa journalist, and 100 thousand NTD (around $3330) from Mr. Yuan-huei HU(胡元輝), totaling 1.8 million NTD (around $59,895). Also, a characteristic
shared by weReport and its parent company the Better Press Development

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Committee was the fact that most of those involved in its foundation and operation were predominantly media scholars and journalists. Specifically, ofthe five members within its executive committee, four were university faculty
members specializing in media research, and one was a veteran journalist.
5. The report of advert expenses in the first half of 2016 published by 凱絡媒体
週報

https://twncarat.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/專題報告：2016上半年廣告量報告/(access date: 01/05/2018)

6. 2016 report on the total amount of digital advertising in Taiwan published by
DMA 台北數位行銷經營協會

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_o2GwbW3-B_Mjc5X3Z1ckRPV0k/view(access date: 01/05/2018)
7. CommonWealth Magazine, a survey on the degree of trust in the media
http://www.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=5076477 (access date: 01/
05/2018)
8. LIN, Tsong-jyu 林聰吉. “Institutional Trust in Taiwan: An Analysis on Media
Trust” (台灣民眾的機構信任：以媒體信任為分析焦點). Soochow Journal of Political
Science (東吳政治學報), 2012, 30 (1): 43–79
http://www2.scu.edu.tw/politics/journal/doc/j301/2.pdf (access date: 01/05/
2018)
9. Taiwan Network Information Center (財團法人台灣網路資訊中心)
https://www.twnic.net.tw/ianews.php (access date: 01/05/2018)
10. There are 18 million Facebook users, close to 80% of the total population of
Taiwan, making it the most used SNS.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/295611/taiwan-social-network-penetrat
ion/ (access date: 01/05/2018)
11. CAF World Giving Index 2017https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-publications/cafworldgivingindex2017_2167a_web_040917.pdf (access date: 01/05/2018)12. Ranks 1 to 10 were Myanmar, Indonesia, Kenia, New Zealand, America,
Australia, Canada, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, Holland.
13. https://www.dgbas.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=3402&ctNode=4958 (access date:
01/05/2018)108

14. https://www.unitedway.org.tw/news/12657 (access date: 01/05/2018)
15. The results of the survey carried out by the Grass Roots Influence Foundation 草根影響力文教基金會 in 2015.
http://grinews.com/news/【民調發表】台灣民眾愛心有多少？-調查-新聞稿暨/ (access date: 01/05/2018)16. https://apatw.gitbooks.io/observation2014/content/TW/donation.html(access date: 01/05/2018)
17. WU, Jia-ying 吳佳穎. “Walking out of the mist forest: The research process of‘Tears and Bloods of Fishing’ (1)” (走出迷霧森林 〈血淚漁場〉 調查報導過程 (上)).
The Foundation for Excellence Journalism Award (財團法人卓越新聞獎基金會).
http://www.feja.org.tw/modules/news007/article.php?storyid=2241 (accessdate: 01/05/2018)18. The article site in Tempo Magazine
https://magz.tempo.co/konten/2017/01/10/LU/32624/Human-Bondageaboard-Fishing-Boats/21/17 (access date: 01/05/2018)19. https://tw.appledaily.com/headline/daily/20161219/37490336/ (access date:
01/05/2018)
20. It is the supreme body monitoring government offices.

Bibliography
LIN, I-hsuan 林怡蕿 (2014). Ethnicity and Media in Taiwan: Politics of Integration,
Acceptance, and Rejection (台湾のエスニシティとメディア―統合の受容と拒絶のポリ
ティックス). Rikkyo University Press (立教大学出版会).
LIN, C. C. 林照真 (2006). Journalist, Why do you not rebel? The Concepts andPractice of Investigative Reporting (記者，你為什麼不反叛？調查報導的構想與實現).
CommonWealth Magazine Company (天下雜誌社).
LIN, Chi-ying 林淇瀁 (2013). “The Fiction Narrative Conventions of Taiwanese
Reportage” (台灣報導文學的虛構敘事規約). Taiwan Studies in Literature andHistory (文史台灣學報), 6: 25–47.

LIN, Lih-yun 林麗雲 (2012). “A Primary Research on the Distribution of Public
Commissioning Journalism: A case study of weReport” (台灣公共委製新聞傳布之初探：以 weReport 為例). The Era of Public Commissioning Journalism: the109

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meaning and future of Investigative Journalism Platform (公眾委製新聞的時代來臨
調查報導平台的意義與展望). High-Quality Journalism Development Association(優質新聞發展協會), 27–46.

CHEN, Yi-shing 陳宜欣 (2015). Crowdfunding Journalism in Taiwan: The Case
Study of weReport (新聞群眾募資平台的實踐：以 weReport 為例). Master Thesis
of Graduate Institute of Telecommunications, National Chung Cheng
University (中正大學電訊傳播研究所修士論文).

LO, Shih-hung 羅世宏 (2012). “The Issues and Future of Investigative Journalism:
Looking back to the East from the West”(調查報導的困境與前景：從西方回望東方). The Era of Public Commissioning Journalism: the meaning and future of
Investigative Journalism Platform (公眾委製新聞的時代來臨 調查報導平台的意義與
展望). High-Quality Journalism Development Association (優質新聞發展協會),
47–76.
News E Forum (2014). Gatekeeper on the Street: NTU News E Forum’s Reportage ofAnti-Service Trade Agreement Movement (街頭守門人 台大新聞 E 論壇反黑箱服貿運動報導紀實). Acropolis Publishing (衛城出版).

LEE, Sherry, Yo-en LIN, Yi-ting CHIANG, Han-wen CHEN 李雪莉・林佑恩・蔣宜婷・鄭涵文 (2017). Bloods and Tears of Fishing: the truth of Taiwan’s Pelagic fisheries(血淚漁場：跨國直擊台灣遠洋漁業真相). Flaneur Culture Lab (行人文化實驗室).

YAMADA Kenichi 山田賢一 (2017). Internet Media Dealing with Serious Topics are
Expanding in Taiwan: The Actual Situation and Challenges (拡大する台湾の硬派型ネットメディア―その現状と課題). The NHK Monthly Report on Broadcast
Research (放送研究と調査). NHK Bunken (NHK 放送文化研究所), July: 106–116.

Initially, this essay appeared in Japanese in the next book:Tansa-journalism/Chousa-houdou 探査ジャーナリズム／調査報道 (Investigative
Journalism: Nonprofit News Organizations Emerging in Asia), Tokyo: Sairyusha,
2018, 53–85.
TEZUKA Mafuyu translated this essay into English, and the author edited thetranslation.

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The Asahi Shimbun’s Foiled Foray
into Watchdog Journalism
Martin Fackler

In Japan’s public disillusionment following the triple meltdown at the
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, the Asahi Shimbun, the nation’s second-largest daily and the “quality paper” favored by intellectuals, launched a bold experiment to regain readers’ trust.
On the sixth floor of its hulking headquarters overlooking Tokyo’scelebrated fish market, the newspaper gathered 30 hand-picked journalists to create a desk dedicated to investigative reporting, something
relatively rare in a country whose big national media favor cozy ties
with officials via the so-called press clubs. The choice to head the newsection was also unusual: YORIMITSU Taka’aki was a gruff, gravel-voiced
outsider who was not a career employee of the elitist Asahi but had beenhead-hunted from a smaller regional newspaper for his investigative
prowess.
Yorimitsu set an iconoclastic tone by taping a sign to the newsroom
door declaring Datsu Pochi Sengen, or “No More Pooches Proclamation”—a vow that his reporters would no longer be kept pets of the press
clubs, but true journalistic watchdogs.
The prosaically named Investigative Reporting Section proved an instant success, winning Japan’s top journalism award two years in a row
for its exposure of official coverups and shoddy decontamination workaround the Fukushima nuclear plant, which was crippled on March 11,2011 when a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out vital coolingsystems. The new section’s feistier journalism also offered hope of attracting younger readers at a time when the then 7 million-reader Asahi
and Japan’s other national dailies, the world’s largest newspapers by circulation, were starting to feel the pinch from declining sales.
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The Asahi Shimbun’s Foiled Foray into Watchdog Journalism

While the section was not closed down altogether, its output of articles dropped sharply as remaining journalists were barred from writing

about Fukushima, arguably the most important news event that the nation has faced since World War II. Thus marked the demise of one of
the most serious efforts in recent memory by a major Japanese news
organization to embrace a more independent approach to journalism.
The Asahi failure points to the difficulty of investigative reporting, aninherently risky enterprise in any nation because it seeks to expose
malfeasance and challenge the narratives of the powerful. However, thehastiness of the Asahi’s retreat also raises fresh doubts about whether
such contentious journalism is even possible at one of Japan’s big national newspapers, which are so deeply embedded in the nation’s political establishment.
It was a humiliating reversal by the Asahi, a more than 140-year-old
newspaper with 2,400 journalists that has been postwar Japan’s liberal
media flagship. The abrupt about-face was also an important victory
for the administration of Prime Minister ABE Shinzo, which has shown
little tolerance for critical voices as it moves to roll back Japan’s postwar pacifism, and restart its nuclear industry. Abe and his supporters
on the nationalistic right seized on missteps by the Asahi in its coverage of Fukushima and also sensitive issues of wartime history to launcha withering barrage of criticism that the newspaper appeared unable
to withstand. The taming of the Asahi set off a domino-like series ofpreemptive capitulations by other major newspapers and television
networks, which toned down coverage and removed outspoken commentators and newscasters.
Political interference in the media was one reason cited by Reporters
Without Borders in lowering Japan from 11th in 2010 to 72nd out of 180
nations in its 2016 ranking of global press freedoms. Within Japan, critics of the Abe administration took a similar view, saying the administration had heavy-handedly silenced critical journalists. However, whilethese criticisms carry weight, brute intimidation alone fails to fully explain the Asahi’s retreat. The Abe administration has not arrested Asahi
journalists, or even pursued them in court to reveal sources, as happened in the United States when the Bush and Obama administrations
subpoenaed investigative reporter James Risen of The New York Times.

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“The Asahi Shimbun believes such investigative reporting is indispensable,” the newspaper’s president at the time, KIMURA Tadakazu,
declared in an annual report in 2012. The newinvestigative section “does not rely on information obtained from press clubs, but rather
conducts its own steadfast investigations that
require real determination.” 1This made it seem all the more jarring
when, just two years later, the Asahi abruptly YORIMITSU Taka’aki
retreated from this foray into watchdog reporting. In September 2014, the newspaper retracted a major investigative story that it had published in May about workers fleeing the
Fukushima plant against orders. A newspaper-appointed committeeof outside experts later declared that the article, which the Asahi had
initially trumpeted as a historic scoop, was flawed because journalists
had demonstrated what it critically described as “an excessive sense of
mission that they ‘must monitor authority.’ ” 2 The newspaper punishedreporters and editors responsible for the story, while slashing the size ofthe new section’s staff and forcing the resignation of President Kimura
himself, who had supported the investigative push.

Reporters touring the Fukushima plant, February 2016

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The Asahi Shimbun’s Foiled Foray into Watchdog Journalism

What public pressure the Abe administration has applied seems downright tame compared to the much more violent attacks that the Asahi
itself has faced in the recent past, including the shooting death of a reporter by an ultra-nationalist in 1987.
Rather, interviews with Asahi reporters and other journalists suggest
the government compelled the newspaper and other media to silence
themselves by exploiting weaknesses within Japanese journalism itself.
Two of the biggest pressure points, they say, were a lack of professional
solidarity and an extreme emphasis on access-driven reporting. Indeed,
they say the most forceful pressure came not from politicians or officials,
but fellow journalists. At the Asahi’s most vulnerable moment, otherbig national newspapers lined up to bash the Asahi, essentially policing
each other on the administration’s behalf, while also making blatant efforts to poach readers to shore up their own declining circulations.
But the knock out blow came from within the Asahi, as reporters inother, more established sections turned against the upstart investigative journalists. The new section’s more adversarial approach to journalism had won it wide resentment for threatening the exclusive accessenjoyed by the Asahi, as one of Japan’s national dailies, to politicians
and the central ministries. At a deeper level, the investigative reporters’refusal to act as propagandists for the powerful also seemed to jeopardize the Asahi journalists’ cherished position as establishment insiders, sharing the same educational background and elite worldview as
the central ministry bureaucrats who run the country. Under pressure,enough Asahi journalists proved willing to defend this insider status by
discarding the investigative project and the reporters in it.
“They were making proclamations about the high ideals of journalism, but when push came to shove they tossed those ideals away,” said
Yorimitsu, who after the Fukushima article’s retraction was reassigned
to a Saturday supplement where he now writes entertainment features.
“When the chips were down, they saw themselves as elite company employees, not journalists.”
The result was a bitter reversal for a new investigative section that
had been launched with high expectations just three years before, in

October 2011. Former reporters from the section described a headyatmosphere in its early days, as Yorimitsu and his successor, a highly
regarded senior editor named Ichikawa Seiichi, invited ace reportersfrom around the newspaper to join. Reporters recalled that the section
drew what they described as loners and henjin, or “oddballs,” who had
trouble fitting into the team-based reporting of the Asahi’s mainline
Political, Economic and Social sections. They said the new investigative
section gave them the freedom to range across the Asahi’s rigid internalsilos in search of topics while also holding them to higher journalistic
standards, such as requiring use of the actual names of people quoted
in stories instead of the pseudonyms common in Japanese journalism.
“In Japanese journalism, scoops usually just mean learning from theministry officials today what they intend to do tomorrow,” said WATANABE
Makoto, a former reporter in the section who quit the Asahi in March 2016
to found the Waseda Chronicle, Japan’s first NGO dedicated to investigative journalism. “We came up with different scoops that were unwelcomein the Prime Minister’s Office.” (A half dozen other journalists at the paper,
including current and former members of the investigative section,spoke on condition that they not be named, for fear of losing their jobs
at the Asahi.)
Yorimitsu said the new section was the newspaper’s first venture
into what he called true investigative journalism. He said that while the
Asahi had assembled teams in the past that it called “investigative,” thishad usually just meant being freed from the demands of daily reporting
to dig more deeply for details about scandals and social issues. He said
the new section was different because he had his journalists not only
gather facts, but also use them to build counter narratives that challenged the versions of events put forward by authorities.
“Until 2014, the newspaper was very enthusiastic about giving us thetime and freedom to expose the misdeeds in Fukushima, and tell ourown stories about what had happened,” recalled Yorimitsu, whom the
Asahi had hired away from the smaller Kochi Shimbun in 2008 at age 51.
“We were telling the stories that the authorities didn’t want us to tell.”Yorimitsu was brought in to take charge of a smaller investigative

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team that the Asahi had created two years before, in 2006, when it was
first starting to feel the pinch from the Internet. From a peak of 8.4 million copies sold daily in 1997, the Asahi’s circulation had slipped below
8.0 million by 2006, according to the Japan Audit Bureau of Circulations.
(By late 2015, it had dropped to 6.6 million.) The team of ten reporters
was an experimental effort to win readers by differentiating the Asahi’s
coverage.
Until 2006, investigative journalism had been an irregular function of
the Social Section, or Shakaibu, which was mainly responsible for crime
and local coverage, much like the Metro Desk at a large U. S. newspaper.
The Social Section’s last truly significant investigative accomplishment
had been in 1988, when its reporters exposed insider stock trading bypoliticians in what became known as the Recruit Scandal.
To lead the new push into investigative reporting, the newspaper
tapped SOTO’OKA Hidetoshi, a mild-mannered, charismatic former
New York and London correspondent who had risen to become the
Asahi’s managing editor. In April 2006, Soto’oka created an independent
Investigative Team comprised of about ten journalists who reported directly to him. The Team’s first big story was an uncovering of accounting
fraud by major electronics companies.
When those companies threatened to pull advertising if the storyran, Soto’oka said the Asahi’s top management stood behind him andhis team.
“We realized that in the Net era, independent, investigative journalism was the only
way for a newspaper to survive,” Soto’oka said.
However, it was not until Fukushima,
Japan’s biggest national trauma since defeat
in 1945, that the newspaper wholeheartedly
embraced the effort, increasing the numberof journalists and elevating it to a full-fledged
section, putting it on a par organizationally with other, more established parts of
SOTO’OKA Hidetoshi
the paper.

Under Yorimitsu, the section’s crowning achievement was an investigative series called Purometeusu no Wana, or “The Promethean Trap,”a play on the atomic industry’s early promise of becoming a second firefrom heaven like the one stolen by Prometheus in Greek mythology. The
series, which appeared daily starting in October 2011, won The Japan
Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association Prize, Japan’s equivalentof the Pulitzer Prize, in 2012 for its reporting on provocative topics likea gag-order placed on scientists after the nuclear accident, and the government’s failure to release information about radiation to evacuating
residents. The series also spawned some larger investigative spin-offs,
including an exposé of corner-cutting in Japan’s multi-billion dollar radiation cleanup that won the prize for a second time in 2013.

These were promising accomplishments for a new section that
had been created to regain readers’ trust after the Fukushima disaster,when the Asahi and other media were criticized for initially repeating the official line that the government had everything safely undercontrol. As later revelations showed the government had been understating the size of the accident, and covering up potentially damning
information like the fact that the reactors had actually melted down,
the Japanese public turned on the press for failing to challenge theseclaims. The result was widespread distrust in media similar to that

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in the United States following the 2003 Iraq War, when the press was
criticized for blindly accepting the Bush administration’s misinformation about the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. (Distrustin Japanese media was heightened by the fact that foreign journalists were often ahead in challenging officials and exposing their coverups. At The New York Times, my colleague Onishi Norimitsu andI were the first to give a full account of the government’s failure to release SPEEDI radiation forecasts to evacuating residents, a scoop that
helped our team win recognition as finalists for the 2012 Pulitzer Prizein international reporting.3)
In the hand wringing that followed Fukushima, many Japanese journalists and journalism scholars blamed the domestic media’s failure ona couple of factors. One is the press clubs. These are exclusive groupsof journalists, usually restricted to those from major newspapers andbroadcasters, who are stationed within government ministries andagencies, ostensibly to keep a close eye on authority. In reality, the clubs
end up doing the opposite, turning the journalists into uncritical conduits for information and narratives put forth by government officials,
whose mindset the journalists end up sharing. This leads to a brand ofaccess journalism that can seem extreme even by the standards of the
Washington press corps.
Japan has had flashes of effective investigative reporting, such as
TACHIBANA Takashi’s exposure in the 1970s of construction industry profiteering that led to the resignation of Prime Minister TANAKA
Kakuei. However, these efforts, including Tachibana’s, tend to be foundin less prestigious regional papers and magazines. In fact, when the big
national dailies do offer impactful investigative journalism, they often
seem to do so in spite of themselves. The Asahi articles that led to the1988 Recruit Scandal over political payoffs, for instance, were the workof junior reporters in two regional bureaus, Kawasaki and Yokohama,
not the mainline Political Section journalists based at the Diet andPrime Minister’s Office.4
This points to another weak point in the journalism of Japan’s elite
national newspapers: a lack of shared professional identity. Most

reporters join the newspapers straight out of university, and spend their
entire careers within the same company. Few are graduates of journalism departments, much less of a graduate journalism school, learning
their trade entirely inside their newspaper. As a result, the reporters’
first loyalty lies with their company and its interests, not their profession or some set of shared journalistic standards.
This creates a salaryman mindset that leaves many Japanese journalists unable to resist the pressures that officials can put on them via
the press clubs. Journalists deemed overly critical, or who write about
unapproved topics, can find themselves barred from briefings or leaks
given to other club members. This is a potent sanction when careers
can be broken for missing a scoop that appeared in rival newspapers.
On the other hand, refraining from independent or critical reportingis the safest way to ensure inclusion when officials start handing out
information.
Yorimitsu’s journalists said they faced intensifying criticism fromwithin the Asahi, and particularly reporters stationed at one of thepress clubs, who blamed them for angering officials and endangering
access to information. They said the press club-based reporters grewirate with them not just for printing critical articles, but even just for
asking a tough question at a press conference. They said some fellow
Asahi reporters were reluctant to even be seen with them in public, forfear of reprisal by officials or other press club reporters. “Don’t tell anyone that we met,” Watanabe recalled one press club reporter telling him
after lunch.
The section was also the target of growing resentment within thepaper. Yorimitsu’s “no more pooches” proclamation galled other reporters, who viewed it as an arrogant dismissal of their work. As theyroamed freely in search of stories, the investigative journalists frequently nettled other sections’ reporters by trespassing on their “beats,”
or established areas of coverage. The new section came to be regarded
as a bunch of self-important prima donnas pampered by top management like President Kimura.
At the same time, the Investigative Section was also making powerful

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The first came on May 20, 2014, when the Asahi published what was
supposed to be the new section’s biggest scoop yet. Running on thefront page under the banner headline “Violating Plant Manager Orders,
90 Percent of Workers Evacuated Fukushima Daiichi,” the article madethe explosive claim that at the peak of the crisis, workers had evacuated the Fukushima Daiichi plant in violation of orders to remain by theplant’s manager, YOSHIDA Masao. By portraying Yoshida as having lost
control, and workers as fleeing out of fear for their lives, the article challenged the dominant narrative of the manager leading a heroic battle tocontain the meltdowns and save Japan.

Much of the article’s impact came from its source: Yoshida himself.
More precisely, the reporters behind the story, KIMURA Hideaki and
MIYAZAKI Tomomi, had obtained a transcript of testimony that Yoshidagave to government investigators before his death from cancer in 2013.
The 400-plus-page document, drawn from 28 hours of spoken testimony by Yoshida about the disaster, had been kept secret in the Prime
Minister’s Office. Unearthing the testimony was an investigative coup,a fact that the Asahi unabashedly played up in subsequent ad campaigns. Some purveyors of heroic-Yoshida narrative objected that plant
workers were being misrepresented as cowards. But these complaints
may have remained the grumblings of a few if the Asahi had not, just a
few months later, set off a completely unrelated controversy about its
past coverage of one of East Asia’s most emotional history issues, theso-called comfort women.
That uproar began on Aug. 5, when the Asahi suddenly announced
in a front-page article that it was retracting more than a dozen stories
published in the 1980s and early 1990s about Korean women forced towork in wartime Japanese military brothels. The newspaper was belatedly admitting what historians already knew: that a Japanese war veteran quoted in those articles, YOSHIDA Seiji, had apparently fabricatedhis claims of having forcibly rounded up more than a thousand womenin Korea, then a Japanese colony. (Confusingly, the men at the center ofboth of these controversies were surnamed Yoshida, even though they
were not related.)
Journalists in the Asahi say the comfort women retractions were an
attempt to preempt critics in the rightwing Abe administration by coming clean about a decades-old problem. (Abe’s supporters include many
revisionists who claim the women were not coerced, but simply campfollowing prostitutes.) The paper hoped the admission would put to resta long-festering problem, allowing it to clear the decks for more critical
coverage of the administration. If so, the move proved a huge miscalculation. Rather than strengthen the Asahi’s hand, the revisionist right
seized on the admission to challenge the newspaper’s credibility, andits liberal editorial stance of calling for greater remorse for the war. The

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enemies outside the newspaper by exposing problems at Fukushima.
This became particularly true after the pro-nuclear Abe administration
took office in December 2012. While other media began to obediently
cut back on articles about the accident, the Asahi stuck to its guns, making the newspaper increasingly stick out.
“We were being told that the Prime Minister’s Office disliked our stories and wanted them stopped,” Watanabe recalled, “but we thought wecould weather the storm.”
They may have been able to do so if the Asahi had not given its opponents not just one but two openings to strike.

Top Page of Asahi Shimbun on May 20, 2014

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The Asahi Shimbun’s Foiled Foray into Watchdog Journalism

public pillorying, led by the prime minister himself, grew so intense thatthe internal magazine of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan ran
a cover story entitled: “Sink the Asahi !”“It is a fact that its misreporting has caused numerous people to feelhurt, sorrow, suffering and outrage,” Abe told a Lower House budget
committee on Oct. 3, 2014. “It has caused great damage to Japan’s image.”
It was at the peak of this maelstrom, when the Asahi was on the ropes,that the criticism of its Fukushima-Yoshida scoop suddenly became national news. In late August 2014, the Sankei Shimbun and the Yomiuri
Shimbun, both pro-Abe newspapers on the political right, obtained
copies of Yoshida’s secret testimony, which they used to make reports
challenging the version of events put forth by the Asahi. “Asahi Reportof ‘Evacuating Against Orders’ At Odds With Yoshida Testimony,” theYomiuri, the world’s largest newspaper with 9 million readers, declared
in a front-page headline on Aug. 30. The wire service Kyodo News also
got a copy. In addition, the normally liberal Mainichi Shimbun also used
the testimony to try to discredit the Asahi.
According to these stories, the Asahi’s epic scoop had gotten it wrong.
While the Asahi seemed to imply that the plant workers had knowingly
ignored Yoshida’s orders, the newly obtained copies of his testimony
showed that in fact he had said that his orders had simply failed to reach
the workers in the confusion. The other newspapers used this revelation
to link the Asahi’s Fukushima coverage to its comfort women coverage,
accusing the paper of once again sullying Japan’s reputation, this timeby inaccurately portraying the brave Fukushima workers as cowards.
(Whether the Asahi actually got the story wrong is debatable, since
its original article never actually stated that the withdrawing workers
knowingly violated Yoshida’s orders; however, it did fail to include themanager’s statement that his orders had not been properly relayed, anomission that could lead readers to draw the wrong conclusion.)
The fact that two pro-Abe newspapers and Kyodo News had suddenly
and in quick succession obtained copies of Yoshida transcript has led towidespread suspicions—never proven—that the Prime Minister’s Officeleaked the documents for them to use against the Asahi. True or not, thenews outlets seemed eager to serve the purposes of the administration,
perhaps to improve their own access to information, or to avoid suffering a similar fate as the Asahi.
At least one newspaper also saw the Asahi’s woes as a chance to steal
its readers. The Yomiuri stuffed glossy brochures in the mailboxes ofAsahi subscribers blasting it for tarnishing Japan’s honor, while puffing
up the Yomiuri ’s own coverage of the comfort women, glossing over thefact that it had also published stories about comfort women based on
the same discredited testimony. This attempt to poach readers, dubbed“Project A” within the Yomiuri, ultimately backfired as both newspapers
lost circulation.
Despite the growing pressure, Asahi journalists say the newspaper
initially intended to defend its Fukushima-Yoshida scoop, going so far
as to draw up a lengthy rebuttal to its critics that was to have run on
page one in early September. As late as Sept. 1, Ichikawa, who headed
the Investigative Section at that time, was still telling his reporters thatthe newspaper was ready to fight back.
“The government is coming after the Special Investigative Section,” hesaid in a pep talk, according to Watanabe and others who were present.
“The Asahi will not give in.” However, that rebuttal was never published. Instead, President Kimura surprised many of this own reporters
with a sudden about face, announcing at a snap press conference on
Sept. 11 that he was retracting the Fukushima-Yoshida article. Reporters
say the newspaper’s resolve to defend the scoop had crumbled when
resentful journalists within the newspaper began an internal revolt
against the article and the section that produced it.
The newspaper was also starting to exude the whiff of panic, as sales
staff warned of steep declines in readership and advertising after thescandals. This was happening as media peers were ganging up on the
Asahi, making the newspaper feel isolated and vulnerable. One Asahi
reporter, KITANO Ryuichi, said this had a bigger psychological effect on
the newspaper’s decision making than any pressure from the prime
minister.
“We found ourselves standing all alone,” said Kitano, one of the

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reporters who had investigated YOSHIDA Seiji’s claims for the 2014 retraction. “The administration didn’t even have to criticize us because
the media did it for them.”

The Asahi Shimbun’s Foiled Foray into Watchdog Journalism“The Asahi retreated from its experiment in risky, high-quality journalism, back into the safety of the press clubs,” said HANADA Tatsuro,
a professor of journalism at Waseda University in Tokyo. Hanada wasso dismayed by the Asahi’s retreat that he helped found the Waseda
Chronicle in 2016. “It makes me think that the days of Japan’s huge national newspapers may be numbered.”

Related articles in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus• Sven Saaler, Nationalism and History in Contemporary Japan
https://apjjf.org/2016/20/Saaler.html• Akiko Takenaka, Japanese Memories of the Asia-Pacific War: Analyzing the
Revisionist Turn Post-1995
https://apjjf.org/2016/20/Takenaka.html
Retraction of Fukushima-Yoshida article
by Asahi September 12, 2014

The Asahi’s official line is that the Fukushima-Yoshida story was just
too flawed to defend. The new president, WATANABE Masataka, hastalked about the importance of investigative journalism. The Asahi
made a comeback of sorts in 2017, when it set off a damaging political scandal by exposing a deal in which an Osaka school with ties toPrime Minister Abe and his wife was allowed to buy public land at asteep discount.
However, scholars and former section reporters say the newspaper
will not be able to resume the deeply reported, narrative-challenging reporting that set the Investigative Section apart. Reporters like Yorimitsu
say they were punished to mollify detractors, a decision that will discourage others in the future from taking the same risks inherent in investigative reporting. While the paper did expose the questionable landdeal, they said that the Asahi as a whole has lapsed back into the old,access-driven ways of Japan’s mainstream journalism at a time whensteepening falls in subscription rates at all national newspapers showthat the public actually desires something different.
124• David McNeill, False Dawn: The Decline of Watchdog Journalism in Japan
https://apjjf.org/2016/20/McNeill.html• Uemura Takashi, Journalist Who Broke Comfort Women Story Files 16.5 million Yen Libel Suit Against Bungei Shunju: Uemura Takashi’s Speech to thePress
https://apjjf.org/-Uemura-Takashi/4813/article.html

Notes
1. The Asahi Shimbun Corporate Report 2012, p. 4. (no longer available online)
2. The Committee for Restoration of Trust and Resuscitation, Jan. 5, 2015.
http://www.asahi.com/shimbun/3rd/20150105c.pdf
3. Norimitsu Onishi and Martin Fackler, “Japan Held Nuclear Data, Leaving
Evacuees in Peril,” Aug. 8, 2011, The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/world/asia/09japan.html
4. The Asahi Shimbun Company, Media, Propaganda and Politics in 20thCentury Japan, Translated and abridged by Barak Kushner, London: Bloomsbury, 2015, pp. 273–274.

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Martin Fackler is Assistant Asia Editor at The New York Times and a former
Tokyo bureau chief for the newspaper. This is a revised and expanded versionof an article that originally appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review.

Waseda Chronicle in JapanAn earlier version of this article appeared in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan
Focus, December 15, 2016, Volume 14, Issue 24, Number 2, Article ID 4989.
https://apjjf.org/2016/24/Fackler.html

WATANABE Makoto

A short history from its founding journalist

1 Breaking free from Japan’s established media
1-1 Fudging the circulation numbers

With over 53 million copies printed, Japanese newspapers reached theirhighest circulation in 1997. Roughly half the population subscribed to
one paper or another. By 2019, that figure fell to about 37 million copies,
70% of the peak.
But the real number of papers delivered to readers is lower. In 2016,
I examined Asahi Shimbun internal documents showing the paper’s
sales figures: “Remaining copies” not delivered to subscribers made up
over 20% of distribution agencies’ stock, with the figure expected to increase to 30% in the near future. In 2020, I spoke with a newspaper sales
agent who told me that business is tough because newspaper companies pressure them into accepting more copies than demand requires.
Ad revenue is the reason why a greater number of copies are printed
than delivered — more copies, more revenue. The excess copies help
newspapers maintain their profits by making it seem as though theads are reaching a larger audience. Corporations taking out ads are notinformed of this discrepancy. Japan’s traditional media may decry fakenews, but when it comes to readership, they are far from honest.
As business worsens, fudging the circulation numbers isn’t the only
way newspaper companies flirt with fraud. After filing a freedom of information request with Japan’s National Consumer Affairs Center, Waseda
Chronicle learned that the center receives roughly 5,000 complaints
regarding newspaper sales per year. A significant number of these complaints related to seniors, living alone and with impaired cognitive functions, who had been convinced to subscribe to multiple newspapers.
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I interviewed an elderly woman living by herself on a meager pension;
she wasn’t as sharp as she used to be. And she had subscribed to threeof Japan’s national daily papers: the Asahi, Yomiuri, and Mainichi. One
day, her daughter came to visit and happened to notice that her motherwas being inundated with print news. She quickly contacted the sales
agencies to cancel the subscriptions.
In 2019, the Japan Post Group was found to be selling life insurance toelderly with compromised cognitive functions. The mass media panned
the scheme without exception. Pot, meet kettle.
1-2 Pseudo success in sales

Although the decay of Japan’s newspapers in the last quarter-century
may seem extreme, to my eyes it is not a material change. Circulation
numbers have never been an indicator of the news makers’ tenacity or
the news readers’ engagement.
The prolific circulation of Japan’s national dailies has not been earned
through achievements in journalism. Instead, the figures are a resultof extensive and effective sales activities, centered on the door-to-door
distribution system. A former president of the Yomiuri Shimbun, whichis said to have the highest circulation in the world, once boasted that hecould sell newspapers without a single word printed on them.
Before entering university, I worked for a time at a newspaper distribution agency. In pursuit of new subscribers, the other sales staff andI gave away complimentary laundry detergent and kept a sharp eye out
for moving trucks. But what my colleagues didn’t have an eye for was
the content of the papers they were trying so desperately to sell. They
hardly ever cracked one open. Their pitches never included an explanation of what news and opinions it conveyed. What kind of salesperson can’t explain their own product? Still, I think what I saw was thenorm rather than the exception. The impressive circulation numbersof Japan’s national dailies were achieved by effective sales networks,a world apart from journalism itself.

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1-3 Toasting too soon

However, the reporters themselves are often unaware that success insales does not equate success in journalism. I know: As much as it pains
me to say it, I have been among their number.
For example, during my time at the Asahi, if a big scoop by my colleagues and I made the morning edition front page, we would crack
open drinks in the editorial department as soon as production finished.
Usually, that was around 1:40 a.m. Readers hadn’t even read the storyyet; who knew what their reaction would be. We were simply celebrating
our story making the front page of a national paper. As if it were a game.
If we journalists had remembered who we were supposed to serve, wewould have celebrated a story sparking a reaction, no matter what pageor edition it was carried on. What meaning does a front-page story have
if it generates no response? It was as if we were playing baseball to an
empty stadium but eagerly congratulating ourselves on our sporting
prowess.
Press club membership is also sometimes mistaken for journalistic
achievement. These press clubs are housed within government offices,and the reporters who belong to them are, by design, the first to hear of
any news the government agencies want to release. With a reporter’sbadge, a certain number of which are allocated to media companies,
reporters can freely enter the National Diet building, the Diet members’
office building, ministries, and various companies. But government
agencies and offices are there for the benefit of all taxpayers. Is it fairthat only members of specific media companies enjoy such access?
Reporters sometimes even have chauffeurs. It may be normal practice for a company president or executives to be driven around inswanky black cars, but I think most would agree that for an average reporter it’s odd. The New York Times Tokyo bureau is housed in the samebuilding as the Asahi head office. A Times bureau member once told me
that, when he first came to the office, he “was shocked by how young
the Asahi ’s executives were” after seeing a string of youthful reporters
get into company cars.
Japan’s reporters are a privileged group. Many members of the public
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are critical of the special treatment that the reporters themselves takefor granted. But, enjoying the perks of their profession, Japan’s reporters
remain obliviously out of step with those they are meant to serve.
It reminds me of the tale of Urashima Taro. The titular protagonist
rescues a turtle, who, as thanks, takes him to the undersea palace
Ryugu-jo. The palace is full of wonders, and each of its four sides manifests a different season. But time moves slower under the sea, and by
the time Urashima Taro returns home, everything he knew is long gone.
If Japan’s reporters are luxuriating in their own undersea palace,disconnected from the world above, then who led them there in thefirst place?

1-5 Establishing a foothold

Following the Manchurian Incident in 1931, Japan’s newspapers usedtheir coverage of the war to expand their readership. During this period,
many grew into the major outlets we know today. But their reportage
merely consisted of repeating “imperial headquarters announcements”
crafted by the government and military as quickly as possible, passing
propaganda on to the public. They learned that acting as messengers forthe powerful was the surest way to increase their profits. And so, Japan’sreporters settled into their palace under the sea.
In 1945, a young kamikaze pilot named UEHARA Ryoji understood
how the government and military used the media to deceive and control
the people. A university student before being drafted into the military,
on February 7 — about three months before his death — Uehara wrote
about the “authoritarians” who had spurred Japan into the desperate
Pacific War.
“They deceived the ignorant public and used the war to secure theirown positions. Naturally, that meant sacrificing the people of thecountry.
“Although they conspired to use journalism to fool the public andserve their own ends, they must still bow before the natural consequences.” (Note 1)
On May 11, 1945, Uehara died at 22 in the coastal waters of Okinawa.

Although millions lost their lives in the Pacific War, the Japanese media’s relationship to power lived on. I entered The Asahi Shimbun in 2000.
As the years passed, I increasingly felt that reporters, including those in
my own workplace, were living in a “Ryugu-jo” prepared for them by thepowerful.
Housed inside government agencies, the press clubs, in particular, reminded me of the palace under the sea. Press club reporters have open
access to press conferences with ministers and governors, and they’realways being given new materials. Although it might seem as though
the press club reporters are being waited on hand and foot, in reality
there is little substance to the information they are given. Freedom of
information requests, which government agencies are required by law
to answer, often unearth documents not provided to the press clubs.
These instances make it all the more obvious that the clubs are only
given scraps.
I realized I would rather pursue investigative journalism than be apress club reporter. Investigative journalists don’t just relay information
given to them by the authorities, they conduct independent reporting
to uncover hidden facts. And investigative journalism’s purpose isn’t tobe first to publish information that will duly appear in all the papers, it
is to reveal information kept secret by the powerful. But each time I told
my superiors or colleagues at the Asahi that I was interested in investigative journalism, this is what I heard in reply.
“You can’t do investigative journalism without first establishing asolid foothold in the government and police press clubs.”“Establishing a foothold” meant building personal connections withmembers of the government and police through the press clubs and developing a deep knowledge of their fields.
That didn’t sound like investigative journalism to me. There’s a difference between becoming familiar with a given field and becoming familiar with the government agency that handles it. It’s the difference,for example, between a “crime reporter” and a “police reporter.” A crime
reporter interviews not only members of the police but other relevant

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individuals, including those directly affected by the crime. They examine what led to the incident and how to prevent similar cases fromoccurring. They even consider whether the perpetrator will be able toreintegrate with society after serving time. A police reporter, on theother hand, focuses on the police’s investigations; the climax of theirreporting is a suspect’s arrest.
It is entirely possible to conduct deep investigations without “establishing a foothold” in the press clubs. You can still build an information
network within the relevant agencies. But what’s important is to compare the information you receive from said agencies with other sources;
that’s what’s missing in the press club system. With both feet planted
firmly in the press clubs, reporters have no freedom to grow into investigative journalists.

attended by hundreds of employees anxious to understand what was
happening at their own organization, only a handful actually asked
questions.
Executives trying to save their own skin is not a particularly unique
phenomenon. But in this instance, the objections from the Asahi ’s reporters were beyond feeble. Journalists have to face down politicians
and corporations, but they couldn’t even speak their mind in their own
organization. This was the kind of journalist the Japanese media environment had created. What would happen to me if I stayed?
I knew I had to leave the Asahi.

I decided to leave Ryugu-jo — the comfortable, confined world of Japan’smass media — in 2015.
The Asahi ’s special investigative section, to which I belonged, hadbeen trying its hand at investigative journalism without relying on thepress club system. But in 2014, the experiment failed, with the retractionof an article on the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The paper shrank into
its shell and stopped publishing bold stories. I had been planning towrite a series of articles on collusion between pharmaceutical companies and doctors; although the first story was released in April 2015, theseries was soon called off.
The Fukushima article and series on pharmaceuticals were killed
not because of any specific managers but because of problems inherent in the industry. For example, in the case of the Fukushima article,
citizens and lawyers claimed that its retraction was unfair and incomprehensible; they even submitted a written complaint to the paper. But
the majority of reporters at other outlets kept their mouths shut. Asahi
executives held an internal meeting to explain the situation to employees. I tried to demand answers of them then, but was later cautioned by
my supervisor not to press the issue. Although the meeting had been

2 Founding an investigative newsroom
2-1 Beginning with the Waseda Investigative Journalism Project
Around the time the Asahi was rolling back its investigative reporting following the Fukushima article’s retraction, I began visiting the
Waseda University Institute for Journalism. Sociology Professor HANADA
Tatsuro led the institute, and skilled journalists from various news organizations were involved as visiting researchers. It became a sort ofgathering place for those envisioning a different future for journalism
in Japan.
“Just stewing in our frustration with the mass media won’t change
anything,” we said to each other. “We’ve got to do something about it.”
In August 2015, I visited South Korea to check out some of the emerging independent newsrooms in the country.
Among them, the Korean Investigative Journalism Center (KIJC)
Newstapa had the greatest impact on me. Newstapa was founded in2012 by journalists from the public broadcasters KBS and MBC who
had been demoted or fired from their positions due to pressure fromthe administration of President LEE Myungbak. In its early years, every
time Newstapa broke a story, more and more citizens signed up to bemonthly donors. Currently, the organization has roughly 30,000 donating members. Supported by ordinary people, Newstapa’s investigative
journalism is free from pressure from advertisers.
After visiting the Newstapa office, in the evening I went out for drinks

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with editor-in-chief KIM Yongjin. Over a bottle of soju, Kim encouraged
me to quit the Asahi and found a new newsroom.
Although Newstapa’s success inspired me, I could see one major impediment to replicating it: money. I had no start-up capital and little
faith that Japan’s underdeveloped donation culture could support aninvestigative journalism nonprofit.
Still, I wanted to try. Japan’s mass media avoids investigative journalism because it takes time and money and carries the risk of lawsuits, but
I wanted to prove that it could be done. In the internet age, the mass
media no longer has a monopoly on the purveying of information. But
investigative journalism is still a field in which professionals can render
an indispensable public service.
Upon returning to Japan, I shared my thoughts with Professor Hanada. “I’ve been waiting for journalists to take action and start theirown initiative here in Japan,” he said happily. And so, the Waseda Investigative Journalism Project (WIJP) was born, housed in the university
institute. I resigned from the Asahi in March 2016, and WIJP began thesame month.
However, that didn’t mean Waseda University had agreed to foot thebill; we would have to fundraise for ourselves. Our chicken-or-the-egg
debates over whether funding or results should come first went roundand round. In the end, I decided to prioritize producing investigative
journalism over fundraising. Japan had neither a strong donation culture nor any preceding examples of nonprofit investigative newsrooms.
I felt it was important to show people what they would be supporting
before asking for contributions.
2-2 Our first series, “Journalism for Sale”
A little less than a year after WIJP began its activities, on Feb. 1, 2017,

pharmaceuticals. The series was the result of an almost year-long
investigation.
Why did we launch with “Journalism for Sale”? The answer lies in
Waseda Chronicle’s values and mission.
First of all, Waseda Chronicle aims to assist those victimized by
the powerful and prevent others from being victimized in turn. With
“Journalism for Sale,” we wanted to ensure readers knew that these compensated articles were designed to sell something, so that they could
make more informed choices about their health. Often, the articles
did not include sufficient information about side effects or other facts
inconvenient to the pharmaceutical companies trying to make a sale.
Leaving out information about side effects could have dangerous consequences. The articles were presented as objective news, with no mention that they were paid promotions. Patients, desperately searching for
information to improve their condition, were being misled.
The second reason for beginning with “Journalism for Sale” was toshow that, if it is in the public interest, Waseda Chronicle is not afraid totackle taboo subjects that Japan’s established media wouldn’t touch. As
an advertising giant, Dentsu has the power to withhold ad money frommedia outlets like newspapers and broadcast networks. As such, themass media wouldn’t dream of running a negative story about Dentsu. I
knew we had to publish “Journalism for Sale” precisely because the forprofit media couldn’t do it.
“Journalism for Sale” generated a huge response from readers. To
cover operating costs, we ran a crowdfunding campaign concurrently
with the series. We aimed to raise 3.5 million yen. We received 5.5 million(about $52,000).
2-3 Leaving the university to become a nonprofit

we released our first article under the name Waseda Chronicle. The series, “Journalism for Sale,” revealed how advertising giant Dentsu, pharmaceutical companies, and Japan’s newswire Kyodo News colluded
to publish compensated articles — not marked as such — promoting

Although Waseda Chronicle began as a project of the Waseda University
Institute for Journalism, exactly one year after releasing our first article,
Waseda Chronicle left the university to become a nonprofit in February
2018. I became both editor-in-chief of the newsroom and executive director of the nonprofit.

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We left Waseda University in order to clarify who determined andtook responsibility for our work. While part of the university’s journalism institute, I could call myself editor-in-chief, but I was really no morethan a project leader. If Waseda Chronicle were sued over our reporting,
who would take responsibility? Even though we clarified on our websitethat it would be me, as editor-in-chief, there was still a possibility thatthe plaintiff would come after the university. In order to become a truly
independent newsroom, we had to ensure that the editor-in-chief hadsole responsibility for what was published.
In terms of who had authority over our work, at the university we had
to receive approval for a range of matters and were unable to sign contracts with anyone outside the university. But Waseda Chronicle was
not just aiming to produce investigative journalism, we were aiming todevelop a business model that would sustain it. The freedom to quickly
and flexibly implement fundraising activities was only possible by leaving the university and becoming a nonprofit.
2-4 Waseda Chronicle’s investigative journalism

As of July 2020, Waseda Chronicle has 15 members. Our team includes
professional journalists, of course, but we also have aspiring journalists still in university and members with experience starting their own
business. The addition of our English editor means we now publish bilingually. All our members joined Waseda Chronicle because they want
to help build an independent, investigative newsroom that works to end
abuses of power.
Our pamphlet lists Waseda Chronicle’s five promises to our readers.
(1) We will continue reporting until the situation changes.
Waseda Chronicle aims for our work to have a positive impact byending abuses of power. We choose the subjects of our investigations
with an eye to finding solutions to problems affecting society. Once
we begin reporting on a topic, we will continue to do so until wecreate change.
136(2) We always put time and effort into our work.
Investigative journalism requires significant time and effort. Throughextensive research, interviews, and discussion with sources, we
obtain and report on information that would otherwise not havecome to light.
(3) We are continuously honing our skills.
Investigative journalism requires specific skills. Without becoming
complacent, we will continue to hone our abilities in order toproduce world-class journalism.
(4) We don’t self-censor.
We will always act based on journalistic ethics, and our investigations
and reporting won’t hold back, no matter who or what their subject
may be.
(5) Our supporters are our compatriots.
We hope our supporters will see themselves as compatriots helping us
make positive change. On behalf of our supporters, we will dedicate
ourselves to our investigations and reporting based on our sharedunderstanding of what social issues need to be addressed.
Under these five promises, Waseda Chronicle has released 15 series inthe three and a half years since we began. Through the creation of apublicly available database, the first of its kind in Japan, we revealed
payments from pharmaceutical companies to doctors. We exposed thepolice’s unregulated collection of DNA for virtually any offense as theycreate a “suspect DNA database” 1.2 million profiles strong. And we reported on the disappearance of a Japanese nuclear scientist potentiallyabducted by North Korea.
Waseda Chronicle is the only Japanese newsroom to become a member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network. International collaborations are an indispensable part of our work. Corporations andgovernments act across national borders; journalists cannot hope to137

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hold them to account if we only conduct investigations and share findings within our respective countries. At Waseda Chronicle, we see ourselves as an international investigative newsroom based in Tokyo.
With Newstapa and the Indonesian magazine Tempo, we reported
on the construction of pollution-belching coal-fired power plants inIndonesia by Japanese and South Korean corporations. In partnershipwith The Guardian, we examined the phenomenon of solitary deathsin public housing complexes, as members of the generation that supported Japan’s economic growth face poverty in their old age. Together
with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, we reported on how international tobacco giant Philip Morris promotes
its heated tobacco product IQOS as a better alternative to continued
smoking, despite there being no conclusive evidence to back up that
assertion.
Our work has made an impact. For example, we revealed that, following World War II, the Japanese government implemented a programof forced sterilization of individuals with disabilities, with prefecturescompeting to perform the most sterilizations. As a result of other media
picking up the story following our reportage, the ABE Shinzo administration offered an official apology to victims, and a law was passed
granting them financial compensation. As a result of our first series,“Journalism for Sale,” Dentsu promised at its shareholders meeting toreview its business practices, and Kyodo News said it would no longer
publish compensated articles. The South Korean corporation involvedin power plant construction in Indonesia announced in the National
Assembly that it would be withdrawing from the project. Japan’s
National Diet even used our database showing payments from pharmaceutical companies to doctors.
Despite these successes, Waseda Chronicle is still strapped for cash.
Our main revenue streams are monthly donating members, one-time
donations, crowdfunding, and grants from domestic and overseas
foundations. But even taken as a whole, these funding sources are notenough to support Waseda Chronicle’s sustainable growth. Although
we had hoped that monthly donors would be able to cover operating

3 Current challenges and future direction
3-1 Civil society engagement
When I visited Newstapa in 2016 and committed to founding Waseda
Chronicle, my calculations were as follows: “Newstapa has 40,000 donors [it now has fewer]. And 80,000 South Koreans donate to some news
organization or another. Although it’s true that Japan doesn’t have a robust donation culture like South Korea, at 120 million its population is
twice as big. And Japan has no other donation-funded, nonprofit, investigative newsrooms, so Waseda Chronicle would have no competitors.”
I have to admit, I was overly optimistic. As I mentioned earlier,
Waseda Chronicle has only managed to acquire less than one percent ofNewstapa’s donor number. What causes such a disparity?
In my opinion, one reason is that South Korea’s civil society is much
more engaged than in Japan. The 2016-2017 Candlelight Revolution
calling for President PARK Geunhye’s resignation is a prime example ofSouth Koreans’ civic engagement. I could feel their untiring determination as I watched news footage of demonstrators packed tightly in frontof Seoul’s City Hall.
In Taiwan as well, the Sunflower Student Movement occupied
Taiwan’s legislature to protest a trade agreement with China approvedby President MA Yingjeou’s administration. Taiwan also has a donationsupported investigative newsroom, The Reporter. Evidence would suggest that when a populace is committed to supporting democracy, it
will also support journalism.

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costs, even three years on, we only have around 200 of them. That’s lessthan one percent of Newstapa’s donor base, which had so inspired me.
As a result, Waseda Chronicle’s members must work other jobs tomake ends meet. Currently, I am the only full-time staff. Investigative
journalism requires an enormous amount of work even at the best oftimes, but our team members are unable to give it their undivided attention. Although passion and ideals have sustained them up to now,
I worry that our members are in danger of burning out unless Waseda
Chronicle’s financial situation improves.

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Well, what about Japan? The Abe administration, the longest aJapanese prime minister has ever been in power, has received its fairshare of criticism. Similar to how South Korea’s President Park wasforced to resign for giving preferential treatment to her “friends,” Prime
Minister Abe is also ridiculed for his “buddy politics.” He sometimes appears to have little regard for the National Diet and the law.
But Japan has seen no Candlelight Revolution or Sunflower Student
Movement. Dissatisfaction never seems to translate into action forJapan’s jaded body politic.
Perhaps this is because the Japanese public has never fought for theright to self-govern. Although the Tokugawa shogunate was overthrownin the 1868 Meiji Restoration, it was no more than a transition of power
between two factions of the warrior class. The general public played nopart and simply traded one set of rulers for another.
Another reason why Japan’s civil society doesn’t actively support
independent, investigative journalism is that the government doesn’t
exert overt pressure on the media. Instead, it controls them by inviting
them into the power structures. In return, more often than not, the mass
media shares only information convenient to the powerful, keeping the
public in the dark. How much has the Japanese media really changed
since World War II? When citizens thought they were winning the war,
they weren’t likely to speak against it; rather, they abetted it.
A recent example of the media being invited into the power structures is that newspapers were exempt from a 2019 consumption tax hike.
Only food products are similarly exempt. When I asked a senior official
in the Ministry of Finance why newspapers had been singled out for
special treatment, he told me that the decision had come from Prime
Minister Abe. With every scratch of their back, the media becomes lesslikely to report news that would displease those in power. Left uninformed of wrongdoing, the public will never find the anger necessary to
demand accountability.
Most members of the media appear to feel no guilt over benefitingfrom proximity to power. Rather than journalists with a duty to holdpower to account, they see themselves as company employees who

A tepid civil society and a press aligned with the powerful are all themore reasons why Waseda Chronicle is necessary for Japan. Blaming
civil society for our trouble fundraising is in danger of sounding like anexcuse. After all, society is always changing. Despite the odds, we must
lead by example and continue to serve the public with fearless investigative journalism. With luck, those who see our work will be inspired tosupport it, as compatriots aiming to improve society. In order to trigger this movement, we should position ourselves not as antithetical to
Japan’s dysfunctional mass media but as a new, positive vision of whatjournalism can be.
Every time Japan faces a national crisis — from World War II to the
Fukushima nuclear disaster to Covid-19 — the media fails to fulfill its
watchdog function. And the public knows it. I sense their dissatisfaction with the established media is coming to a head. To my eyes, thishas caused the people to give up on the established media. But I also
see cause for hope. In July 2020, Waseda Chronicle received the inaugural Journalism X Award, which recognizes citizen-supported journalism
in Japan.
At this turning point in the Japanese media landscape, we decided
to change Waseda Chronicle’s name to Tokyo Investigative Newsroom
Tansa. This change will be effective in early 2021. It’s the beginning of thenext chapter of our organization’s history. Though the coming years willbring new politics, new crises, and new technology, the need for investigative journalism will remain unchanged. To serve the public, Tansa
is here to stay.
Tansa means “investigation” in Japanese. We chose the name because
it represents our journalistic mission and our commitment to our craft.

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happen to produce news for a living. That’s why they don’t show professional solidarity or collaborate between organizations, for the goodof both their profession and the public. Instead, Japan’s reporters shutthemselves away within their companies, and the media shuts itself
away within the structures of power.
3-2 Reborn as Tansa in 2021

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From now on, everyone will know what we do as soon as they hear who
we are.
Training young journalists is essential to our newsroom’s future.
When I eventually leave the organization, it will fall to the next generation of members to continue building on Tansa’s culture and bodyof work. In fact, the ones who determined our new name were three
women in their 20s: two of our reporters and our English editor. They
chose Tansa after brainstorming nearly a hundred options, and I feel
their final choice shows their understanding of and commitment to investigative journalism.
Ironically, because we do not have the funds to hire them, none currently work for Tansa full time. The reporters work for other print media,
the English editor as a translator; they are unable to commit their fullenergy to our newsroom. I want our new chapter as Tansa to begin withthese young journalists joining the team as full-time members.
Going forward, we will also work to create more opportunities for
citizens to be involved in journalism. Specifically, we will launch an online course that teaches journalism skills— how to acquire, analyze, andshare information — to practicing and aspiring journalists, as well as
average citizens. The internet age has democratized information; now
we must empower citizens to use that information for the sake of theirdemocracy.
Although the course takes place online, we plan to hold gatherings
for the participants to meet in person, bringing together journalists
from various organizations and providing opportunities for them tofurther engage with citizens. In this way, we hope to create a community of practitioners who are eager to collaborate to improve journalism
in Japan.
We’re still just at the foot of the mountain, and we’re sure to meetmany challenges as we forge a path ahead. But that’s what it means to
be a pioneer. With our mission always in mind, Tansa will continue toserve the public with fearless, independent investigative journalism.

4 Closing
I’d like to finish with a few messages from individuals who donated toour crowdfunding campaign following the release of “Journalism forSale” in February 2017.
“Independent media is a lifeline for us citizens. Thank you so muchfor creating this organization.”“I was 10 years old when the war ended in 1945. It pains me to see thestate of journalism in the postwar years up to now. I will soon be gone,
so I’m passing the torch to the next generation. Give it your all!”“I’m supporting Waseda Chronicle as a way to become better informed. As much as you can, please conduct investigative journalism
from the average person’s perspective — for all citizens, not just thechosen few. For a future in which we can stand tall, breathe deep, andlive free.”

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Note
1. Ryoji Uehara, Ah, My Homeland, My Fiance, Listen to the Sea God. New Edition(あゝ祖国よ 恋人よ きけわだつみのこえ〔新版〕). Nagano: Shinano-mainichi-shimbun,
2005, p. 193.
Translated from Japanese by Annelise Giseburt.

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The Creation of Space Surrounding the Public
The mode of struggle adopted by social activism
and investigative journalism
TANAKA Hiroshi

the 18th century. So, when discussing the public, we must maintainan attitude of sustained inquiry as to how the public within its actualsocial context or the public as a concept has been conceptualised andput into effect.
1.2 The public as a realm

The public, as a political subject within civil society or as a concept toindicate openness within the process of communication, is necessary
for the formation of autonomy in daily life. Furthermore, the public is
one of the principles of democratic society upon which the activism ofsocial movements and the performance of journalism are founded.
However, the public, as a word, is like a prism. We envision various
images which prompt hope and idealism, doubt and despair. These cannot possess a clear shape but do partially overlap. Hence, conflicting
emotions are evoked. Thus, it is hard to justify just a certain set of definitions. Similarly, it isn’t easy to interpret the public through seeminglysynonymous terms. For example, even if we were to read the adjectival use of public as official, and the nounal use of the public as people,
this would still fail to truly capture or explain the meaning of the term
public. Yet, it is also difficult to tackle this matter from the opposite
angle by providing the public with its distinct meaning or direct existence. Nonetheless, these challenges must not drive us to interpret thedivision between the private and the public as some self-evident structure, as such a perspective might mistakenly eliminate any subjects orobjects which do not fit within that assumption. Even in an instance
where some land or building belongs to someone, with definite borders
marking out this material object, the boundary of private and public
can shift according to historic conditions. Jurgen Habermas, for example, discusses how the cafes and salons of western Europe, which once
gathered private individuals, became a place for the public at aroundAround a century ago, the American philosopher John Dewey witnessed
the advent of mass society along with the consequent dismantlementof traditional regional society and attempted to save the public as it
wavered between the two. According to his book, The Public and its
Problems, that public refers to an aggregation of all people who have acommon interest in responding to an instance wherein the consequenceof some actions exerts a continual social influence. In other words, it isa collective consisting of individuals who hold a common social interest. Dewey theorized that it would be possible to overcome the politicaldisinterest caused through the dismantlement of regional society, by
forming this democratic subject known as the public. However, a key
factor here is that this public is not something which has always existed
within regional society but, rather, it is the retention or alteration of behaviours and interactions by people, either directly or indirectly, manifesting itself upon those areas of interest. It does not mean that specificsubjects automatically become the public by sharing an interest. The
public can only appear in a realm centred around modes of behaviour
and interaction. Within Dewey’s argument, which discusses the public
as a subject, this characterisation of a subject as the public is a reciprocal relationship between the subject and the realm. In short, a specificsubject can only become the public because that realm appeared; thepublic is created within that social realm.
Then, how does the public function as an adjective? For example, we
use the public as an adjective in terms like public facilities or public
works, public transport, public opinion and public relations. The word
is characterised by the fact that its subjects are all open to access bylarge numbers of people. In a situation where the provision of facilities
and services, or the spread of opinions and information, operates on a

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1 The appearance of the public
1.1 The public as a focal point

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vast scale, we have a habit of applying the adjective public to describethat object. That is to say, the public as an adjective indicates that acertain object is available to anyone. Hence, such objects, deemed to be
public and described as public, cannot exist independent of us. They areobjects which form, or have the capacity to form, a tangible relationshipwith our everyday lives, existing on a premise of open use and participation. In this sense, the public is a word which describes the non-exclusivity of its object. Indeed, those various objects can only be publicthrough, not just a mode of interaction, but also the open nature of that
action tying the tangible object to the everyday lives of people. In otherwords, any object being public indicates a systematic implementationof open use and participation with regard to that object. So, the public,
as a quality constituting these public objects, is not embedded within
the facility or information itself. Similar to the public as a subject, thispublic also emerges within those areas that act as a focal point for interaction. However, where the public as a group of people placed emphasison the formation of a democratic subject with interest in interaction,
the public as an expression focuses on an object’s mode of action withregard to use and participation. Yet, despite these differences, neither
public contradicts the other. Indeed, they share a key commonality inthe fact that the public as a realm is formed through specific social relationships and practices based on those relationships. Thus, this paper
defines the public as the following. With regard to actions or practices,the public is a non-exclusive democratic realm created through the interactions between physical elements and everyday activities.
1.3 The public as a question

The public as a realm fulfils the purpose of a platform, during the formation of a democratic subject in regional society, and systematically implements openness within the ties between various objects, actions anddaily life. As such, the realm of the public is operational within thoseconditions where the daily lives of people are democratic and non-exclusive. Up until this point, we have analysed the public based around
topics such as the formation of a collective subject, the use of facilities
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and participation within press activities. Social movements and journalism also belong on this list. Social movements are the manifestation of collective actions by active political subjects, protesting against
labour structures, economic policies or political systems in order toachieve their respective goals.
Meanwhile, journalism is the philosophy of press activity as a service
loyal to the people and civil society, in accordance with which, journalists have exposed the injustices of power through newspapers andtelevision. So, both social movements and journalism are social agents
involved in the public as a realm. However, in recent years, that public
has itself become the subject or object within such struggles. Recentsocial movements, like the Occupy movement, have used streets andsquares as platforms for their activism. Streets and squares should, by
right, be a place for the creation of the public. Why do these people
occupy such places to raise their voices in protest there? Journalism
has begun to seek its centre of activity within the internet. Why did
it move away from media like the newspapers or television, thoselong-standing channels for its transmission of the public? Could theseestablished subjects and objects have become separated from the public to adopt repressive and exclusive qualities? If this is the case, wemust first discern how the public as a realm is structured, in order toanalyse that transformation then.
Thus, below, we will begin by analysing the spatial formation of the
public as a realm within the context of the spatial theory. The analysis
will position social movements and journalism as key points within thatspatial formation in order to examine their relationship with the public.
Then, after noting the key characteristics of the internet, we will explore
the possibility of restructuring the public, through various statements
or studies on recent social movements and journalism. This is not an
inquiry into the ideal form of the public as an idea or abstract concept.
It is an attempt to investigate the creation and transformation of real
spaces, via the activity of social movements and journalism, by positioning the public as a social space.
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2 The spatial formation of the public
2.1 The public as space
We have discussed the public as a realm connected to interaction andthe structure of its social relationships. Nonetheless, the criteria bywhich a realm is determined to be the public remains ambiguous. For
instance, if we were to employ an arbitrary scale of quantity as the criteria, its validity would remain questionable. That classification runs
the risk of reducing the public to a conceptual image cut off from thepeople. Thus, this paper seeks to pursue the public as a realm from another angle, without reducing it to a matter of numbers. Furthermore,examining the public as a realm that connects objects and actions requires an understanding of this interplay as a mutual relationship between both sides, instead of a structural relationship wherein one side
determines the other. Such a study is possible through the framework of
the spatial theory. Of course, a spatial theory might not be the only way
to analyse the public as a realm. However, Henri Lefebvre, whose specific strain of spatial theory considers the lived experiences of people tobe an important impetus for the formation of space, provides a particularly effective perspective through which to determine the process thatcreates the public as a realm.
Lefebvre considered space to be closely linked with our way of life,
stating that “(Social) space is a (social) product” (Lefebvre 1991: 26).
He believed that social space not only forms in response to the attachments, imagination and interests of people but also exerts a significant
influence on our way of life. He believed that just as cities and regionalsocieties have historically been formed and modified whilst under various influences, space is born from an interaction between the material
conditions and the abstract yet tangible relationships that people have
harboured there. In other words, space is a subject that exerts influenceon our actions, whilst also being an object created through those actions. Lefebvre discusses this interaction from a material dimension, aconceptual dimension, and a dimension wherein the two are merged
as one. These are the three moments of spatial practice, representation of space and space of representation, corresponding to the ways inwhich actions are perceived, conceived and lived, respectively. Each, inturn, indicates the tangible actions that create space, the conceptual
framework of its abstraction, and, the self-evident everyday life being
led through that conceptual framework.1 Space is one form of social relationship, which is formed in a tangible yet abstract manner throughthese three moments. It should be noted that the real space is realised
on a material level as a spatial practice. Christian Schmid describes thisas below:

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“Social space appears in the dimension of spatial practice as aninterlinking chain or network of activities or interactions which on
their part rest upon a determinate material basis (morphology, built
environment)” (Schmid 2008: 37).
Space appears differently in response to our actions and thoughts.
Lefebvre’s interest lies in the relationship between capitalism and ourdaily lives, investigating how the influence of production, consumption and exchange means that “activities and locations when taken together as social space can constitute the fourth realm of social relations,
namely, the production of wealth or surplus value” (Gottdiener 1994:
123). In other words, actors within the government or market place reduce people and their daily lives to controllable symbols, or parameters
within a plan, in order to protect or expand their profits. This one-sided
abstraction and immobilization support the creation of an unequal social space, which not only suppresses any true prosperity of life or creative connection within society but also becomes a system to serve theinterests of a select group of people. The city, for example, has altered its
nature along with the development of capitalism, gradually rebuilt intoa mere means for the oppression of people. It was these historical transformations that Lefebvre intended to unravel. However, it is also such
spaces that make our lived daily lives possible; space is not necessarily
bound to become a self-serving tool of oppression.
So, where can the public be positioned within Lefebvre’s spatial
theory? Just as direct interaction was not automatically the public

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2.2 Social movements and the space of the public

according to Dewey, everyday life by itself cannot be deemed a realmof the public. Thus, though a little roundabout, it can be understoodthat the conditions for the appearance of the public are met throughinstances within everyday life where some tangible social relationshipis considered to be essential, or, alternatively, through instances wherethe value etched into that relationship is recognized. Furthermore, if weare to position the public as one form of social space, it is necessary tofound that space upon the everyday sensations and lived experience ofreal actions, and not the sort of broad behaviours that might be charted
on an abstractive graph. As such, we must perceive those tangible
bodies and the sensations embodied therein, as well as their physicalactions, to be the practice that results in the creation of space. This allows us to position the public as a social space formed through interaction. In other words, the space of the public is formed in response to
the memories or stories, etched into a place and the human relationships therein, as well as the thoughts or ideas that are put into practicethrough these mediums.
Of course, if we were to isolate one part of everyday life and envisiona real space, that space can still be realised as a realm of the public. Yet,using that public as some absolute definition would mean continuallycreating an unjust order that demands forceful exclusion and compulsory subsumption. Such a public would thereby lose its responsive relationship with tangible actions and social relationships, to impose aninvisible hierarchy on the lived experience and relationships of people.
Hence, the public should be thought of as a space that maintains thepossibility of reformation. It might aid understanding to think of public
works, wherein hypothetical plans often come into conflict with thosereal senses of daily life.2 As a result, there are cases where the construction of a real space greatly impacts upon daily communication: dams
bury valleys, highways cut through towns. So, we must maintain theperspective that “public space is thus socially produced through its use
as public space” (Mitchell 2003: 129). If space has lost any opportunity
for dismantlement and reformation, that space is but a tool. The issue
lies in the criteria used upon creating a space.

In the context of spatial theory, social movements can be seen as a collective resistance against “time-space colonization” (Gregory 1994: 401).
This time-space colonization is caused by those urban planners, technocrats, investors or realtors, who generalise spaces as an exchangeable commodity to produce spaces based on these blueprints and theirown benefits/interests therein. The spaces where people live are thus
divided and rendered an object of trade, which might then become acolony of the capitalist system. There, space is made a tool to prioritise
the profit of a select group, in accordance with the logic of politics andthe economy, reduced to a sequence of collective symbols to be manipulated/managed atop a game board. In some circumstances, even thebodies and emotions of people might become mere commodities for
trade. For example, the construction of a giant shopping mall, plannedby committee, will divide the shopping districts woven throughout atown by creating one central location of consumption. This colonisation can occur in many forms, such as the price or rent of some landor residence being raised via restrictions on the use of adjoining parks
and green spaces, or the centralization of economic activity through aconcentration of high (or low) price housing in specific locations. These
plans are created from a perspective peering down onto the daily livesof people from on high. Furthermore, this idea of space, and its realisation, aims to manipulate the concentration or dispersion of people andthings. It is fundamentally different from those spaces whose residents
can live as users with a true fondness for their surroundings. Indeed,this callous homogenization of human bodies and lives into calculable
objects, divides them according to some criteria based on one-sided designs of comfort and utility, creating a boundary between the central
and the marginal, or the internal and external, the excluded and subsumed. It is a spatial form made to reflect the profit of the establishedpolitical system and economic structures. Thus, our everyday lives are
one-sidedly divided, and our lived daily lives fall into dysfunction. Thismeans estrangement from the space of representation and an effective
seizure of the public.

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Whose thoughts do such a perspective represent? Who was space
therein created for? For those who plotted out space, the people livingin those real spaces are reduced to a Them as objects to be manipulated,or else, they are merely a collection of consumers. Social movements
express opposition to such one-sided formations of space and pursue a
democratic realisation of that opposition. Lefebvre argued that a resistance tied to places should be formed in response to that sort of divisionand domination of space.

What sort of space does the mass media form? The mass media

maintains a skewered relationship with a small number of transmittersto a large number of recipients. Furthermore, the mass media, as theindustry aims for the attainment and maximisation of profits. As such,even if they were tasked with diversifying their contents, ultimately,
they would envision the masses or majority as the recipient for theirpapers or channels. Of course, inferences about the people’s experiences of daily life made from those few interactions with such recipients,
and the questionnaire surveys conducted through various networks or
samples extracted by analysing vast amounts of data, might be usefulfor planning their operations and business strategies. Nevertheless, if
those efforts are directed at the protection or expansion of their vested
interests as an industry, and the maintenance of relationships with theirown powerful supporters, the established authorities, they will simplify
and homogenize the various social relationships of people as a seriesof conflicts or entanglements between multiple masses. This may havebeen valid in particular historical circumstances when people felt a special sense of significance in being a homogenized mass. However, thelimitations of representing people as a faceless Them, by categorizingthem as the mass, are becoming ever more apparent. That mass as asymbol, which no longer reflects reality, not only stagnates their modeof communication but also increases their distance from the reality of
everyday life.
This communication protects vested interests while assuming a faceless mass, and in so doing, creates an estrangement of daily life fromspace. Furthermore, that estrangement is deepened if the mass media
positions its recipients as a homogenous mass of nationals and sharesthat image with the established authorities. This is an act of violence bya system formed through distancing itself from the realities of social life,
and its collusion with authority both secures the media’s power over its
recipients and evidences a mindset that rationalizes the action of continuing to profit from that process. Even if some information, edited on
the basis of such a format, were to result in the formation of a space ofthe public, it would soon descend into a repressive space. It is an antisocial space that the people will one day fix.

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“The proliferation of links and networks, by directly connecting upvery diverse places, and by ending their isolation—though without
destroying the peculiarities and differences to which that very
isolation has given rise—tends to render the state redundant …”(Lefebvre 1991: 378).
Lefebvre saw the government as the driving force behind spatial oppression, but, today, this structure of oppression exists on a global scale.
However, that possibility of creating a mutual connection between
places remains. Indeed, it is possible to create space through a relationship of the We with the people as users of such spaces. If people can recover the substantivity of places, to create ties between places, we could
rescue the real spaces from becoming inhuman colonies, from once
again reclaiming them as a space of the public. We must create spaces
with places as their starting point. In other words, within the context ofspace, social movements can be considered an act which aims to produce public autonomy by creating a connection between people andplaces. Social movements protest against spatial formations that impose estrangement upon the people as a status quo. This demands therealisation and autonomy of the space of the public. It defines the spaceof the We as a way of life, or social relationship, that incorporates both
body and mind, calling for the realisation of that space.
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However, there are actors of communication in the mass media who
do not act according to the drives of a self-perpetuating organisation.
These are the journalists who consider the world of everyday life (thespace of representation) their field. From a spatial perspective, journalists are actors who investigate changes within the social space, monitoring the modes of space production, as individuals equipped with a lived
sensation of daily life. This is the role of journalism as a watchdog, and
it is a longstanding idea which has always altered its method of practice in response to the historical conditions. If this idea was to seek its
place of origin or loyalty in the world of everyday life, in other words, if
it were to seek a foothold in a symbolic order cultivated through the We,
it could become a defender of lived experience or an attacker against
establishment authority. Especially in circumstances where journalism
has placed its activities in a space beyond the framework of one community or region, its practice will simultaneously broaden the potentialof social spaces. That activity would become an opportunity to form thespace of the public from a variety of angles.
However, in a situation founded on the premise that journalism
belongs to the mass media as an industry, its field of activity will be
restricted according to the interests of its medium. Furthermore, thework of journalists who envision a faceless popular majority for thesake of political or economic success, driven by a desire for popularity,
would likely result in activities far removed from the space of the public.
Though there are circumstances where the mass creates the public, thepublic does not necessarily need the mass. As such, in order to overcome that fundamental rift between the imagined majority and the real
space, we should examine the form in which journalism is practised.
We must inquire anew as to what medium journalism can use to establish a responsive relationship with the world of everyday life.

of the We or the Them; the nature of the public changes depending onwhether the basis for spatial practices are placed on lived experiences
or an abstract concept separate from reality. In other words, there is arisk of the public being forged by the authority. However, these are only
theoretical considerations. What sort of practices do social movements
perform to attain reality for the space of the public? And, through whatsort of practices can journalism realise the space of the public? Thoughthese questions come from two different points, together, they becomea pursuit of alternativity within the reformation of the space of the public. Today, the internet, and digital devices which employ it, have permeated into all sorts of scenes within everyday life, and we cannot ignore
its influence upon proceeding with this discussion. The below will first
analyse the space of the internet in the context of spatial theory, before
delving deeper into the study of social movements and the mass media.
3.1 The internet as space

3 The Movement of the public
We have positioned the public as a type of social space and analysed its
spatial formation to gain the following insights: the space of the public
can appear differently depending on whether it is founded on the logic

We use electronic devices, and the software operating within them, ona daily basis; and the internet connects these to various places andpeople around the world. In fact, we have constructed an ecosystemcorresponding to the many services provided by the virtual space. It
has become possible to form new communities that were previously unimaginable. In that sense, it is not wrong to think of the internet as botha tool and a place for communication. For example, the means of interaction known as social media, is one such place. Of course, the internet
and its digital devices did not appear out of the blue. It already has a history. Over ten years ago, these situations, wherein the virtual space andthe material space can interact through mobile devices, were alreadyconsidered “Hybrid Spaces” (de Souza e Silva 2006). Now, social media
is said to function as “social platforms ‘mediating’ between private andpublic space” (van Dijck and Poell 2015: 4). Taking these arguments into
account, one can see some truth to the suggestion that this rapid permeation of the internet is making the boundary between the private
and the public ambiguous. Indeed, just as we cannot continue our daily
lives without material space, it is becoming almost unimaginable to act

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without the information born of digital technology. Therefore, it seems
entirely reasonable to discuss the formation and alteration of space by
the internet.
Yet, might not these discussions be based upon a premise that either segregates space or approves a tacit hierarchy between virtual andmaterial space? People equipped with mobile devices are repeating
cross-border communications in all sorts of situations within daily life.
However, a mindset that rejoices in the expansion of the virtual world as
the arrival of a new age, which sees the material world as an accessory
to it, is merely an abstraction of reality. Alternatively, a perspective centred around the material space, from a rejection or fear of the internet,
is but a reduction of reality. In fact, such communications, much like thehistorical phenomena of human migration or expansions in the scopeof interaction, are actions that cannot be separated from real material
space. To be precise, it is the creation of space. It is difficult to deem
online space to be a realm entirely independent from material space unless it escapes its status as a virtual manifestation of reality. Hence, wemust distance ourselves from any approach that places its argumentative focus on the independence of the online space or the material space
to make the superiority of one side its premise or conclusion.
When seen from a spatial perspective, the various activities that
employ the internet are an impetus for triggering change within social space, in the form of a specific spatial practice. Alternatively, it isa practice which rewrites the system of various symbols carved into
the existing space. Of course, with regard to its innovation of industrial
structures and technologies, the internet and its further use abstraction of reality. For example, when studied as a tool, with a focus on themode of traffic and correspondence embedded therein, one can observea phenomenon known as “time–space compression” (Harvey 1989) occurring through the internet, caused by expansion and accelerationin the circulation of capital and financial products. Alternatively, it ispossible to see the technologies of virtual reality such as AR or MR as
an over-writing or simplification of the system of symbols within space.
Nonetheless, if one understands the online space to be an impetus

within social life, that space can provide the space of daily life with powers of imagination and a reformation of the symbolic system, unlike anything that has come before. In other words, by positioning the internet
as a field of interaction within space, the sensibilities born through that
network, and its practice, show a potential to revise the format of symbols embedded in the material space. However, its tendency to cause
the concentration and dispersion of people, via the imitation of specificsocial relationships based on particular values, cannot be denied.
When considered in this light, the use of the internet, as one spatial
practice, possesses a nature that, on the one hand, homogenises our social relationships, while on the other, provides the possibility of creating
an alternative social relationship. Either way, at this point, the internet
gives us, in the modern world, an opportunity to create some sort of relationship. It seems indisputable that it will inevitably alter the existing
space. Especially in an instance where the space of the public, createdunder the initiative of the established authorities, is functioning as an
excuse for oppression, the space of the internet offers an opportunity
for opposition. Thus, the conditions needed to invigorate a movement
around the public are already in place. We must inquire as to how thatspace can be reformed. We must analyse the types of interpersonal relationships that are practised in social movements, and what sort ofspace of the We that this relates to. This is not an analysis of what has
become possible in social movements through the internet and mobile
devices, but an analysis of what those people gathered on the streets
intended to create: to ask what sort of spatial practice it was. And, what
mediums do journalists use to approach the space of the We, where thereal people live? As the internet continues to modify the material andsymbolic order, we must consider the sort of space of the public thatmight be attached to this phenomenon.

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3.2 Social movements and the creation of the public

By what sort of mode could the space of the public be reformed? While
it is necessary to examine this further, unfortunately, it would be difficult to discover any direct tangible values within the space of everyday

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life. Because this space is lived directly as second nature, cloaked in various symbols and sensory impressions as a realm of self-evidence, its values cannot be stated in a direct or definite description. This indicatesthe vulnerability of that space. Due to these properties, space also acts
as a platform for discriminatory ways of life or poor labour conditions.
However, one can see this vulnerability, not only as a demerit but also
as one of its strong points. The space of everyday life as a collection ofsystems is not completely homogenised through the centralisation ofsome specific values. While there is the possibility that it is unknowingly accepting oppression, the space of everyday life is lived in various ways through the people’s imaginations and, simultaneously, does
not deny their coexistence. Because there are so few scenes wherein thevarious symbols are clearly brought to attention, the space of everyday
life does not exclude the various possibilities for coexistence. In otherwords, because there remains a realm that cannot be fully expressed inwords that anyone might understand, the space of everyday life is easily
attacked, and thus vulnerable, yet simultaneously very flexible in accepting various ways of life.3
This vulnerability and mixtuality form the space of daily life as two
sides of the same coin. As such, it is difficult to think of social movements as an existing idea with specific clear-cut values resisting some
attack against it. If that were the case, that movement would be a battleof concepts or ideologies based on abstraction, and the actualisationof space creation would be a secondary objective. Instead, it is moreaccurate to think of social movements as shareable social relationships
emerging in response to the building of boundaries by authority and its
one-sided attempts to tear spaces apart. It can be described as a resistance against the seizure of the public through separation. The important factor is what sort of space of the We appears on the streets, as aspace of the public.
Judith Butler examined the recent social movements that occurred in
Egypt and America to cite a protest against spaces of appearance as their
distinguishing characteristic (Butler 2015). This spaces of appearance
is a concept originating from Hannah Arendt, as a space that indicatesequality in politics through the cooperation between people. However,according to Butler, there are powers at play within that space, drawing a line on who appears inside the space. And Butler argues that thepeople taking part in the social movements have stepped into the existing spacing appearance. In short, she considers the recent movements
to have been collective actions attempting to create a new spacing appearance. To borrow the words of Athena Athanasiou, they were movements attempting to “shift spaces of appearance to spacing appearance”(Butler and Athanasiou 2013: 194).
These social movements were actions attempting to change the relationship between the established authorities and the material spacesthat are seen as existing public spaces, like squares. Those people who
took to the streets not only raised their voices while braving the riskof violence, they debated face to face, eating or sleeping on the streets
together, treating wounds and bathing there. Butler explains that all ofthese actions, including the internet broadcasting and the communication of information done from squares or streets through mobile devices,were political and a protest action “to establish new relations of equality” (Butler 2015: 90). They were movements aiming to rewrite the material space by raising these actions for equality and their assembly as asymbolic social relationship. Also, recent social movements have seen
people gathering on the streets seeking basic rights such as employment, education, equal food distribution, comfortable shelters, freedomof expression and activism. Butler states that they were movements
focused on “how bodies will be supported in the world” (Butler 2015:72). These social movements were a struggle by bodies gathered on thestreets, aiming to restructure space through their actions, in response
to a space that separated bodies and their daily lives. In other words,
it was a rejection of or resistance against a space of division createdby the established authorities, and the people called for that space tobe rewritten through an in-divisional relationship. Furthermore, thosemovements were in resonance with both the vulnerability and mixtuality within the space of representation as they attempted to redraw
the lines of what was official according to the established authorities.4

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This used the streets as a stage to display the lived relations of people
and their mode of communication, attacking the dissonance concealed
within that existing social space. So, the occupation of public spaces
seen in recent social movements shows its distinguishing characteristic in the dismantlement and reformation of the space of the publicthrough a politics of boundaries within social space.

The politics of boundaries can also be seen in the world of journalism.
It is an issue surrounding the dismantlement and reformation of space
and is particularly relevant to the practice of investigative journalism.
This can be seen on two levels: firstly, in the oppressive boundary drawn
between the mass media and the citizens. This is the boundary of themass media industry, attempting to protect its vested interests by sharing the image of the faceless masses with the established authorities.
In recent years, investigative journalism has started to challenge thatboundary. This is linked to investigative reporting organizations choosing to report as non-profit groups using the internet. Employing a different industrial model to the mainstream media makes it less likely for
their activities to be restricted by a business strategy that targets themass. The internet can be considered, not only a tool enabling freedom
in those activities but also a most appropriate means, in the sense that
it is open to a broad audience. By releasing journalism from the boundaries created by the mass media, expanding its freedom in what it reports for whom, the relatively autonomous activity becomes possible.
Furthermore, because the boundary of the mass media had been forced
onto daily life as an abstract concept, rendering it relative expands thepossibility of people accessing more varied information. Thus, the popularization of the internet has prepared the conditions needed to forma space of the public. And, so long as the freedom of communicationand the freedom of its use are protected, it will keep contributing to therecovery of autonomy within journalism.
However, the second is more closely linked to space. It is the politics
of boundaries that creates the Victim. It is thought that working for thevictims, rather than the masses or the industry, is one of the tangible
ways in which investigative journalism is practised. This way of thinking
is referenced in the classic text discussing investigative journalism, thejournalism of outrage (Protess, David L. et al. 1991), and recent manuals
also cite this attitude through the question “Are those people victims?”(Hunter 2011: 12), listed as one of the key questions that journalists
should ask themselves. Indeed, this perspective on the victim has also
been inherited by the Japanese investigative journalism organization
launched in 2017, “Waseda Chronicle”. Thus, it seems reasonable to consider this perspective regarding the victim to be a basic stance for investigative journalism or a shared focus within its coverage.
If a journalist adopts this perspective about the victims as their codeof ethics, putting it into practice will touch upon the politics of boundaries. In other words, journalism is embodied by those people who consider it their mission to carry out actions that touch upon this politics.
As previously stated, our daily life possesses both the characteristics ofvulnerability and mixtuality. There is a risk that the influence of authority might invite closure, and that this might be accepted without criticism, due to those characteristics. Where do the victims feature in thatsituation? The victims are forced into silence outside of that closure.
When any given topic is discussed, it often takes many premises for
granted. If those premises are deemed common sense, it might become
impossible to struggle against the exclusion and discrimination created by that common sense. For example, when somebody talks aboutsomething with nationals as its main subject, this not only necessitatesa contrast against non-nationals, but the specific political system of anation-state is seen as self-evident within that discussion. Of course, it
is difficult to talk about nationals without the premise of a nation-state.
It would require some effort to rearrange that common sense. However,would it be possible to write a story featuring some being that is neither national nor a non-national through that small struggle? Uncriticalunderstanding of a topic and its premises or chatter that anticipates
the repetition of supposedly self-evident beliefs create a closure whichdeems only some specific Being as beings. Here lies the boundary, which

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creates silence. The boundary does not create an inside and outside tobelonging, but an inside and outside to being. As such, victims outside
the boundary are silenced as beings cast into darkness. However, thisboundary is by no means unchanging or universal, let alone neutral.
We can bring up victims who were formerly outside the boundary: themost famous might be leprosy and its sufferers. In recent years, the term
LGBTQ has been picked up and those people, who were previously silenced by debates around gender discrimination or equality, have begun
showing themselves, fighting through pain and suffering.
So, this boundary of silence that creates such suffering and darkness must be confronted. It is that practice which drives and manifests
journalism. Yet, it should be noted that such boundaries are woven
throughout the minutiae of daily life and etched into space as something self-evident. As previously stated, we who live the space of daily
life cannot have a clear and direct awareness of all those boundaries,
unless we are put in positions where we can recognize the oppression
or alienation imposed by authority. Hence, it is difficult to accurately
understand and expose each and every one of these as problems. Of
course, it could be said that those people who have acquired information through proactive use of the internet are in a position to notice
the various boundaries that they were not even aware of and to recognize the suffering hidden within their own daily lives. For example, ayoung person dying from overwork might highlight the terrible work
conditions that were, until then, considered normal. This gives reality
to a space of the public and could become an impetus for that space
to appear. Nevertheless, we rarely notice the faces of those victims inthe darkness turning towards us to tell us something. On top of this,information is shared excessively in the modern world, and its concentration or dispersion can change the forms of those boundaries, all thewhile attempting to restrict our choices and decisions. The many people who try to address these issues with sincerity must also confront
similar difficulties.
When a quick choice or decision based on given information is required, we tend to be led towards the simple response and action of
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agreement or opposition. It is difficult to move away from the stimulusof that information. However, a different possibility remains if we aspire
to confront the suffering. At the very least, if we are aware of the facesof the people standing in that darkness, those faces demand a response
from us as an issue of ethics or duty. It requires us to seek out thoughts
and practices that reject boundaries as something self-evident. Indeed,
it is possible to position investigative journalism as one such effort.
Journalists who confront the suffering, making it their duty to expose
the boundary at work, can give reality to the space of the public as anexpert at exploring that darkness of space. When the vulnerability ofspace is abused to drive people into a corner without awareness or resistance, the journalist can notice this before anybody else and raise thealarm. In their effort to confront those faces, they will come to intentionally distance themselves from any authority as well as the sensibilityof daily life. When journalists practice that sort of activity, journalism
appears therein. However, if that activity descends into a simple act ofrepetition, they might assist the colonization of everyday life without
noticing their universalization of particular values. Whether they canovercome this hurdle depends on whether they notice the faces of thosemany victims floating in the darkness and how aware they are of theboundaries that create such suffering. The only available solution is arepetition of trial and error. If they succeed in this strict self-questioning
and difficult exposition, social relations can regain their aspirations for
an indivisible state. Then, the space of the public can finally find a way
to resonate and move with the people.
4 Towards the occupation of the public
4.1 The struggle of space

This paper has positioned the public as space focused on the relations
between people, then, studied the production of that space throughanalysis into the modes of practising social movements and journalism. As a result, it has become apparent that the lived experience andits powers of imagination within the activities of social movements andjournalism, if founded upon the bonds of mixtuality tied to individual
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people, can make the struggle for an indivisible relationship possible.
The realisation of this relationship is a commonality within social movements, which occupy the streets to demand the rewriting of a publicgrounded in estrangement of spaces, and journalism, which seeks to
expose the boundaries that cause invisible suffering. Furthermore, bothare struggles over the autonomy of spatial practices. The public not only
creates reality in that struggle for space by social movements and investigative journalism but, is also a space created by that struggle.

their clear opposition receive a sincere response to their activism. This
response demands tangible action, and if it is treated as a mere matter of semantics or expression, the sense of alienation between thoseindividuals, the public and the government system would only deepen.
Then, there, the public flares in full force. Activism attempting to construct a new public begins therein, and a space of the struggle is createdto rise out of the darkness, demanding a response.

4.2 In search of a response

Notes
1. Hideharu Saito interprets spatial practice as “practices that etch the various
social relations, characteristic of the age, onto space”, representation of space
as a “statement of space or a realm of code” created by urban planners andtechnocrats, and space of representation as “a realm that can be directly lived
through the medium of images and symbols” (Saito 2011: 290–291)

Is it dangerous to assist in this struggle? It most likely is. It certainly is
not a safe and easy method. However, a certain writer in Kyushu, who
would commute to the gates of a military manoeuvring ground far fromhis home in order to maintain a protest movement, explained the reason he continued to raise his voice in opposition as follows:“Something called the struggle of Kazanashi happened here in the Oita
Prefecture. These were words said during that struggle, ‘Voice youropposition clearly. Because those who do not voice their opposition,
who do not express their objections, are naturally counted as one ofthose in agreement.’ This is always the case. Only those who clearly
express some words of opposition are the opposition, and no matter
how much others might contemplate opposition in their hearts, those
who remain silent, those who do not express their intentions, andthose who claim neutrality, such people are automatically included
amongst those in agreement.” 5Currently, various movements are occurring all around the world.
These represent opposition against the increasingly inflexible establishment of political or economic systems and a rejection of a mainstream
media that shares their vested interests. The aim of these is not to protect individual profits through new divisions. They are a declaration thatthe voices and faces of people, and those interpersonal relationships
etched therein, are indivisible. It is essential that people who express
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2. The abstract concepts that try to put relations between people into a mould
and the sensations of daily life born of lived experiences are incompatible
with each other. However, in instances where there is a naïve belief in capitalism and its reasoning, specific ways of life and an evolutionary image areunquestioningly accepted as a legitimate and rational ideal, thereby fusing
the abstract concepts and sensations of daily life into one.
3. To borrow the words of Doreen Massey, it is a space described as “space as
coeval becomings” or “a radically open time-space” (Massey 2005: 189) thatmakes mutual relationships with others possible.
4. In order to distinguish these actions from spatial practices, Derek Gregoryrefers to them as the “performance of space” (Gregory 2013: 241). It interprets
the social movement itself as an act of space formation.
5. Speech by Matsushita Ryuuichi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIs2cHresjk (Accessed 31/08/2017)

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Initially, this essay appeared in Japanese in the next book:Tansa-journalism/Chousa-houdou 探査ジャーナリズム／調査報道 (Investigative
Journalism: Nonprofit News Organizations Emerging in Asia), Tokyo: Sairyusha,
2018, 174–197.
TEZUKA Mafuyu translated this essay into English, and the author edited thetranslation.

Gregory, Derek, 1994, Geographical Imagination, Cambridge, Oxford: Blackwell.
—, 2013, “Tahrir: Politics, Publics and Performance of Space,” Middle East
Critique, 22 (3): 235–246.
Harvey, David, 1989, The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Lefebvre, Henri, 1991, The Production of Space, Oxford, Cambridge: Blackwell.
Hunter, Mark Lee et al., 2011, Story-Based Inquiry: a Manual for Investigative
Journalists, Unesco.
Massey, Doreen, 2005, For Space, London: Sage.
Mitchell, Don, 2003, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public
Space, New York and London: The Guilford Press.
Protess, David L. et al., eds., 1991, The Journalism of Outrage: Investigative Reporting and Agenda Building in America, New York, London: The Guilford Press.
Saito Hideharu 斉藤日出治. “Kuukan-ron no atarasii houhou kizyun—kukan
no seizi” 空間論の新しい方法基準― 空間の政治. Yoshihara Naoki and Saito
Hideharu eds. 吉原直樹・斉藤日出治編. Modanityi to kukan no monogatari—syakaigaku no forontyia. モダニティと空間の物語― 社会学のフロンティア (2011):
277–314.
Schmid, Christian, 2008, “Lefebvre’s Theory of the Production of Space”, inGoonewardena, K., et al., eds., Space, Difference Everyday Life: Reading Henri
Lefebvre, New York: Routledge, 27–45.
Van Dijck, José and Thomas Poell, 2015, “Social Media and the Transformationof Public Space,” Social Media+Society, 1 (1): 1–5.

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The Public Sphere, Antagonism,and Journalism
HANADA Tatsuro

1. Who is this guy? Whom is he addressing?
Now, what to say at this, the “farewell lecture.” 1 When I first began workon this speech, I did have a title in mind, but, more importantly, any expression requires the speaker to take a stance. That stance necessarily
depends on who they’re addressing. Then, who is my audience for thisfarewell lecture? It is, doubtless, not a homogenous mass but a diverse
group of people, making it all the more difficult for me to narrow myfocus. And, thinking about all this made me rather lose track of what
I wanted to say. This speech is not a classroom lecture, nor is it an academic speech or presentation. The only thing I can say for sure is thatthe people here are all those with whom I share some past association
in some way, shape, or form.
So, I finally reached one conclusion three days ago. All of the rightpeople gathered here today must’ve thought at some point, “The guy’s
retiring from the university, I guess I’ll go listen to what he has to say
before he goes.” Having supposed so, I decided to speak to you all today
based on a stance of discussing my work. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be a
topic to broach in a lecture, but I suppose today is an exception.
In German universities, the word for lecture is Vorlesung. It means
reading a manuscript in front of students. Professors write their present thoughts down on a paper and just stick to reading it out in front of
their students. Furthermore, once they’ve done so, they hurry off home
without taking questions. Sometimes, they turn manuscript into a book,or the notes transcribed by their pupils eventually used to make it intobook form. I generally do not prepare such papers for my usual lectures,
preferring to proceed with PowerPoint presentations. I have, however,
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drafted a manuscript today; because I really wouldn’t want to say anything untoward in my final lecture.
The first point to clarify upon discussing my work is the question:
what are the characteristics of the individual performing said work? Inother words, “Who is this guy talking about his work?” By my estimations, I am a Wissenschaftler or a Sozialwissenschaftler, for these German
words are most fitting in my mind. One could translate these words
into kagakusha and shakaikagakusha in Japanese, “scientist” and “social scientist” in English, respectively. But that loses some of their finer
nuances. The reason why I feel such a strong need to say these termsin German is that I emigrated to West Germany in 1975, as a youth inmy late twenties. Then, I spent eleven years and some months there,
struggling to attain a definite sense of my identity and to overcome
such difficulties to discover who I was. These all happened through theGerman language while I grappled with the German language. Indeed,this was the natural result of the fact that I’d bought a one-way ticket
to escape Japan, with the subjective mindset of one “seeking asylum” inWest Germany. There was, therefore, no real place for me to return towithin Japan. I’d no choice but to develop my sense of self within West
Germany. Even now, certain portions of my mind are still entirely occupied and operated by those foundations built in the German language.
Thus, when all’s said and done, I am a Wissenschaftler, and my work isthat of Sozialwissenschaftler.
On the campus signboard, you saw the title of this speech as a listof three keywords. However, that is, in fact, only an abbreviation, andthe actual full title is: “Journalism as an Antagonistic Cultural Practicewithin the Public Sphere.”
2. Eight-years-long writing on the public sphere
The backbone of my theoretical framework comes from the Frankfurt
School of Germany—also known as “critical theory.” Hardly a surprise since its appeal was what drew me to West Germany. After myreturn to Japan in 1986, I eventually began to write papers related tothe concept of the public sphere. The starting article was “Öffentlichkeit
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as a Spatial Concept: Jürgen Habermas on the Public Sphere and theCommunicative Rationality,” which I wrote in autumn 1990. After publishing it in the following year, I suddenly got inundated with requests
like The Restaurant of Many Orders (title of Miyazawa Kenji’s fairy tale).
So, interpreting those orders as I pleased—to fit my interests and perspective—I went onto produce numerous papers related to the publicsphere at a rapid pace. Those papers were then collected and publishedas books in 1996 and ’99. However, this work was effectively over after
those first eight years in the 90s; because I had run out of things that I’dhave liked to write.
In Germany, the term Öffentlichkeit (public sphere) is a regular fixture
in common parlance, media coverage, and academic discourse. Indeed,
it is the sort of word which one cannot do without when constructing
any related narrative. The question was whether or not there was anequivalent term in Japanese—the suspicion that Japan had no suchcounterpart. And it was this question that made me start writing about
the public sphere. How does Japanese function without that equivalentterm? What are the consequences for society and politics, caused by thelack of such a concept? Of course, this goes both ways: there are plentyof Japanese words, which would be impossible to capture in German or
English accurately. For example, 世間 (seken – often translated to “society,” the “world” or “the public”) or 無常 (mujou – commonly understoodas “transience” or “mutability”).
As a Sozialwissenschaftler, I took that Öffentlichkeit (public sphere) tobe a spatial concept, translating it as 公共圏 (koukyouken) in Japanese.
Then I utilized that concept as an apparatus within my work, where
I observe, understand, explain, interpret, and describe various social
phenomena in and around media, communication, information, andjournalism. My main point of interest throughout this process wasin the manifestations and existence of “what public is” (the public).
I took “the public” to be something that forms and emerges when ourinterests within the private domain or “lifeworld” enter into a negotiating relationship with authority. Furthermore, I took the public sphere to
be the field—that is to say, one social space—within which the actions
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and relationships of “the public” unfold. That means the public sphereis a spatial representation of civil society. As such, in this composition,
the public sphere finds itself standing to confront the state. So, in thosenegotiating relationships between the public sphere and the state, weshould outwardly stand for our right to the freedom of speech/expression
from the state. In contrast, inwardly, we should stand to represent thenorms by which one can demonstrate tolerance for, and solidarity with,those who hold opinions that differ from one’s own.
3. “The colonization of lifeworld by the system”

and the struggle for decolonization
One of Habermas’ many arguments, left an impression upon me, is his
thesis about “the colonization of lifeworld by the system.” This thesis
was a concept proposed within Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns(The Theory of Communicative Action), published in 1981, when I still
lived in West Germany. The idea sought to explain how the arrangement of our modern world gives rise to a fundamental contradiction.
Please take a look at the diagram on your handout (figure 1). Why is
SystemState

Figure 1:

Lifeworld
Private Sphere

ColonizationPower

Bureaucracy

Nuclear Family

Administrative
Apparatus

Private Life
SphereLanguage

Capitalism

Discourse

Market Place

Public Sphere

Money[Space]Economic Society[Relations]

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there this paradox within modern society? Habermas first presents thecurrent social formation as a binary arrangement split between the “system” on one side—consisting of the capitalist market place alongside
the machineries of national state administration—and, the lifeworld on
the other hand—consisting of the public sphere alongside the domainof private life (or intimate sphere). He then explains the differing principles of rationality that drive each side, respectively.
Furthermore, these two domains do not exist apart from one another.
Instead, the values of purposive rationality (efficiency and competition)—
belonging to the system side—carry over into the lifeworld, throughworking of the system’s mediums (power and money). Thus, it invades,
erodes, and destroys the other principle of rationality that exists within
the lifeworld: the values of communicative rationality (mutual understanding through language). Thus, Habermas explains, various pathological symptoms come to plague the lifeworld. A condition which heterms the colonization of the lifeworld by the system.
So, what can we do about this colonized condition? The solution
he proposed was to strengthen the power of the public sphere and theintimate sphere so that they might push back against the pressures ofcolonization. And, the principal actors who take the task with that rolein the public sphere is the association. That is to say, organized alliances
built upon the voluntary involvement of individuals, NGOs, or NPOs
dedicated to new social movements. There seems no hope of immediateradical reform within the mass media, which has joined the ranks of thepower structure to become a business and another cornerstone of theadvertising industry. We can no longer count upon such an institution
to function as the infrastructure for the public sphere. For it is now on
the side of the system.
As previously stated, this thesis of colonization was published in 1981,
while its Japanese translation first came into print in 1985. It was thevery midst of the Cold War, an era when Europe saw Pershing II and
SS 20 nuclear missiles lined up on launchers, each trained on the other.
The Clock’s needles ticked away at five minutes from an all-out nuclear
war. Then came the unexpected fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. “The West”
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took this to mean victory and further strengthened their establishedendorsement of neoliberalism, redoubling their efforts towards the globalization of finance capitalism.
In such a situation, if we want to face up to the thesis of colonization, I would say that what we needed was that kind of fight led by associations. It should be a struggle for decolonization, or, a struggle foremancipation from colonial conditions. Merely “pushing back” would
be much too passive, defensive, and weak; for, the system itself would
remain where it was, undamaged. For the liberation of the lifeworld
colonized by the system, we needed to develop a strategy to change
the system through counter forces. However, ultimately, I never did
manage to compose a piece of public sphere theory with so definitivea strategic program during my eight years of public sphere theories in
the 90s. When I look back, those days were all spent on a long line oftrials: interpreting spatial concepts, then testing the strength of thoseinterpretations.
4. From cultural studies to the expresser’s cultural practiceand the practice of education
Meanwhile, I’d begun to develop connections in the British academic
world, having returned to Japan from West Germany, just before theChernobyl disaster of 1986. I became acquainted with Professor Nicholas
Garnham from the University of Westminster while working for a thinktank in Tokyo. He introduced me to various scholars from the field of
media studies in the United Kingdom. Garnham had paved the way for
Public Sphere theories based on the Öffentlichkeit concept in the UK,with a focus on threats faced by the public in the UK under the Thatcher
administration. I initially met Garnham at a European symposium on
telecommunications policy in Germany, which he was chairing, and we
got on well from the first. He’d read Habermas and Heidegger in German
and read Bourdieu in French. It is thanks to Garnham that I got to know
people working in the field of Cultural Studies. The British intellectualsof that period—right before the fall of the Berlin Wall—were very interesting indeed. After this start, I could cultivate my relationships therein
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throughout my time at the University of Tokyo, with financial support
from the British Council.
Thus, to cut a long story short, in February 1995, I met Stuart Hallin London, where I convinced him to come to Tokyo. Although he was
unwilling and skeptical at first, he eventually agreed to hold a symposium, titled “A Dialogue with Cultural Studies,” to be hosted in Tokyo
one year later. And, after a frantic year of desperate preparations, that
symposium eventually became a hard-earned reality. I welcomed a
total of six scholars, including Hall, at Narita Airport. Yet, the experience and outcome of that four-day-long symposium weren’t remotely
like what I had envisioned. As the chair of this event, I would go on
to face criticisms from many of its attendees—criticisms that I foundfrankly incomprehensible. For our simultaneous interpretations, Simul
International blessed us with what was doubtless the best team of interpreters in Japan, led by none other than Ms. Nagai Mariko. I listened inon both languages through my earphones, and their efforts were truly
magnificent—the most masterful work. Indeed, if there was something
lost in translation, it wasn’t between English and Japanese, but within
the Japanese alone. Many of our attendees were spouting their talking
points without really listening to the opinions of others. So, there theywere, attempting to discuss cultural studies in a manner most unbefitting of that subject. Inevitably, neither the translation nor the dialogue
proved very fruitful.
I made up my mind never again to raise the subject of cultural studies, at least, not in Japan. I’d had enough of it. However, that is not to
say that I left the cultural studies scene. I merely dove deeper, went underground. To tell you the whole truth here, I decided to practice thefield of cultural studies, quietly, without advertising it as such. In otherwords, I switched from “writing cultural studies” to “doing cultural studies.” Specifically, I took journalists to be cultural practitioners and social
expressers, then began to put their training and education into practicefrom a cultural studies standpoint. In my work on public sphere theory,
I’d already positioned journalists as cultivators and constructors withinthose public spheres, wherein various enormous forces conflict andprofessionalism and the education/training of journalists
One other factor which led me towards this education/training of journalists (journalism education) is that it was the logical consequenceof my stance as an institutional theorist. Although he is relatively unknown in Japan due to a lack of translated works, Helmut Schelsky isa well-known sociologist within Germany. His book Zur Theorie derInstitution (For the Theory of Institution) was a crucial influence in mythought. His theory prompted me to start placing a value system within
institutions to examine institutions through the approach of functionality then. As such, I’ve spent a long while analyzing Japan’s journalism
and its mass media from an angle aligned with this theory of institutions. Yet, what will you do when it becomes increasingly apparent thata lack of professionalism lies at the root of their malfunction? What will
you do when you’ve found that a necklace cannot be strung together
due to one missing link? I should’ve pointed this out then left it atthat, but, unfortunately, it occurred to me to try and create that which
was missing.
Why did such a thought have to come to me? It is because I couldn’t
help hearing the call of cultural studies (of course, not that of Japan,
but rather, the cultural studies within my mind). It was an invitation
to take part in the cultural practice of rearing cultural practitioners.
At the same time, it would also be a part of the public sphere project—a production of the public sphere.
In this way — in my case — the education / training of journalists

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confront each other. Taking this set up one step further, I would scrutinize those practices of cultivation and construction as subjects in andof themselves, while also interrogating my practice. The issue, then, was
how we might navigate the way across invisible and established boundaries that have come to appear as being just the way it is.
The text on your handouts is something I published on the Institutefor Journalism website in February 2014—mourning the passing ofProfessor Stuart Hall in my way.2
5. From the theory of institution to the development of

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(journalism education) came to take form within that cross-section between the theory of institutions and cultural studies.
6. Operation “Trojan Horse”
Thus, from around the year 2000 onwards, working at Tokyo University,
I began to take part in what one might term journalism education. To
be candid, we could also call it a “program for social/cultural expressers
practice.” Of course, this involved a lot of trial and error with countless
twists and turns. Then, eventually, after the death of a close colleague,
I was asked to take up his torch by carrying out a system for the graduate school of journalism at Waseda University. This unexpected happening occurred in the autumn of 2005, and April 2006 would markthe beginning of my twelve years at Waseda University. I did submit awritten proposal to the university’s executive body, detailing plans forthe creation of an independent, comprehensive, cross-faculty graduate
school for journalism. But, in the end, these plans were derailed, defeated by university politics, and I stopped pursuing that particular objective. Although there is now a journalism course within the Graduate
School of Political Science which calls itself a school of journalism, thishas nothing whatsoever to do with me. However, moving away fromthe graduate school side to the undergraduate side, the establishmentof a “liberal arts minor in journalism” went smoothly—thanks, in part,to cooperation from management officers. Indeed, we’ve continued tobuild upon the curriculum therein, implementing further experimentation/improvements within its teaching methods, while also publishinga textbook and an encyclopedia for journalism.
I’ve always told our students that “this class lies under the Trojan
Horse operation.” That is to say, this education and training of talent will
neither provide human resources to that distinctly Japanese establishedmedia—the so-called Masukomi—nor prolong the life of that Masukomi,
which has been enjoying its Galapagos-like isolated environment in theworld. The first idea I would impart to our students was that “Journalism
is not the Masukomi and the Masukomi is not journalism.” The operation aimed to pack a wooden horse with educated people who both
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practically and theoretically understood “what journalism entails” and“what it means to be a journalist as a profession” and were willing totake up that mission. Then, we’d offer that wooden horse as a gift for the
Masukomi to be taken through its castle gates. Once inside the stronghold, our people would creep out of their wooden horse under cover of
darkness to begin rebuilding that castle from the inside out, working insolidarity to establish a true manifestation of journalism therein eventually. A plan wherein young people would reform the Masukomi system,from an institutional form that alienates real journalists into a world
where those journalists are its central players. A plan, entrusting journalists, as the cultivators and constructors of the public sphere, with thetask of bringing Japan’s public sphere to life. That was the plan. Looking
around my audience, now, I can spot quite a few such warriors from our
Trojan Horse—many have come, here, today, from far and wide. I hopethey’re doing well.
7. The flaws and limitations of our operation
However, today, this operation faces far more significant difficulties
than it once did. We’re approaching a critical turning point. Or, you
could argue that this turning point might already be behind us. In otherwords, we find ourselves in a situation where the viability of this operation itself feels doubtful. Firstly, the general circumstances withinthose media corporations and organizations, namely the destination of
our students, have gone from bad to worse, with no signs of stopping.
It has reached the point where I cannot help but think that it’s merely
not worth sending any more promising young people their way. The students whom we have sent forth are all struggling within the absurd reality presented by media corporations and organizations. The very factthat they hold moral principles puts them through more strife. And one
can only suffer so much. Indeed, talking to such graduates often makes
me wonder whether the workplaces, within those media corporations/organizations, are all factories built for the express purpose of breaking
people. I want to express anger on behalf of these people, my warriors.
Give these people their castle.
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Secondly, there’s been a remarkable reduction of interest in journalism amongst today’s student body. In other words, we’re talking andcalling out to a much smaller total population. This phenomenon is not
merely my impression, but a numerical fact reflected in hard data. The
chart on your handouts shows this shift in the number of students thathave completed the core subject “introduction to journalism”. Amongthe audience here, I see many graduates who completed this subject.
Where, before, we would have about 500 such students, last year saw
only about 100 such students—basically a fifth of what we used to get.3
So, what might be causing this sharp decline? Although there is nosure knowledge about the reason, the answer is probably that the current state of journalism in Japan—or, instead, the current state of the
Masukomi presented before the students of today—holds no appeal
whatsoever. It evokes no real excitement and seems far from thrilling.
After all, there are generally very few instances that might prompt anyone to develop such feelings for the realities behind any media product.
Furthermore, as things stand, one hears nothing except criticisms surrounding problems with the press club system or assessments about anindustry in decline. Thus, this fall in popularity appears to be natural.
Nonetheless, I cannot help but feel that there’s something more here:that the core interests of students have changed on some fundamental
level. Though, of course, this only applies to the majority of students.
I won’t deny that there remains, as ever, a small minority that stands
against this trend.
Operation “Trojan Horse” 4 had reached a significant limit. Consequently, I had to ask myself whether there was much point in just continuing this project. The answer was: maybe no. That was also when
I reached retirement age as decreed by the university, which would
automatically mean my withdrawal from this operation. Hence, I decided that the “introduction to journalism” taught last spring semester
would be the final one, letting the curtains descend upon the story ofthat subject, discontinuing it. And yet, this January, that subject won
the Teaching Award. The university had seen fit to praise it. There’s anirony to something receiving such praise after its discontinuation is a

8. In this era of the backlash
The situation is dangerous. In these past three years or so, the social
realities that journalism must confront have taken a decided turn for
the worse worldwide. Indeed, things appear to have reached an entirely
new level. Authoritarian governments and dictatorships have emerged
all around the world, and democracy has taken a big step back. Politicalpowers have grown crude, insensitive and brutal, lying without hesitation, destroying the dependability of words themselves, becoming increasingly brazen and arrogant. We seem to be slipping back throughhistory.
Japan is no exception. One can argue that the Abe administration (post second Abe government)—reelected through the House ofRepresentatives election in December 2014—differs from the more
traditional conservative governments in the past, due to its authoritarian character. This character is most apparent in how it views theConstitution and how it views the media. When we look at Abe’s statements and the Liberal Democratic Party’s proposed constitutional
amendment, it is evident that they think of the Constitution as “something with which to shape a nation.” The Constitution should give guiding principles to the nation’s people and families, imposing specificduties, something that binds those people, those families. In their eyes,
the Constitution is not a “contract of governance between civil society
and the state.” In other words, it is not a contract that binds the state by
first establishing what the state as a government organization must not
do during its governance. Instead, it should be a “text given to a nation’s
people” by the state, a text through which the state conveys its own willto those people. We must say that this understanding is a practically
pre-enlightenment mode of thinking.
Furthermore, in the minds of the Abe coalition government (LDP and
Komeito coalition), the media must act as a public relations machinery

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certainty. If they were going to offer their praise at any point, I’d rather
have seen it a lot sooner.
Either way, the new situation demands something different.

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for the government and ought to cooperate with any governmental
activity. They do not seem to recognize any need for “transparency inthe government.” That is to say; they do not see any need for the government to provide accountability by showing the taxpayer the exact
contents of any activities funded by those taxes. As such, there is norecognition for any duty that the government might have to disclose
information produced through governmental activities, nor any respect
for the necessity of monitoring power and the watchdog functions ofjournalism that the media ought to maintain.
The problem is that this authoritarian government was formed via
a wholly legal coalition between the LDP and Komeito, establishing aparliamentary majority, while also accruing a steady stream of support
from a majority of the electorate. Indeed, it is a specific embodiment of
the titular Escape from Freedom described by Erich Fromm in his bookof the same name. From the viewpoint of psychoanalysis, one can saythat such an electorate—who will knowingly support this government
seeking to establish a Constitution that will not bind the state, but, instead, restrain its citizens—must be a collective of masochists. Thosemasochists are willing to abandon freedom, obey authority, and become one with the state.
These past few years, I have always set a particular series of texts tobe read and discussed by the freshmen in our “introduction to the social
sciences” course. It starts with the novel by Yoshino Genzaburo, How
Do You Live? (which has seen a recent resurgence thanks to the publication of a manga adaptation last year), followed by works of Takashima
Zenya towards the midpoint of our course, and ends with the book by
Fromm. This lineup is to stop those students from slipping into slavery because I do not want my dear students to become slaves. “Do you
wish to live in obedience as a slave, forced and obliged by these times?”(Miyazawa Kenji, “To You, My Students”)
Our economic powers, too, are engaged in the systematic implementation of barbarous dealings behind their cosmetic façade of IT andpublic relations. They are working arm in arm with the Abe administration, which continues to spread the past myth of “economic growth.”

They’ve negotiated—under the backup of Abe’s top sales—with foreignauthoritarian governments to export nuclear reactor plant, which
was already proven defunct within our national borders. They’ve
attempted to have the government scrap the basic Japanese Arms
Export Ban to start trading weaponry. And, they’ve also been far
from transparent within their pursuit of profits, as exemplified by thatrecent scandal of bid-rigging on the maglev train line construction.
However, who suffers for their pursuit of such unjust advantages andunfair profits? Who are the ones reaping the rewards of this so-called“economic growth” built upon the sacrifice of others? Indeed, not theordinary people of Japan.

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9. Investigative journalism and the salvation of victims/

emancipation of slaves
So, what is happening amidst this current worldwide barbarization ofpolitical, economic, and social powers? I believe that the keyword hereis slavery. Slavery is not some story from the distant past, nor is it news
from a far-off country. Modern slavery is everywhere; because those systems of power are actively operating everywhere.
The term 過労死 (karoushi – overwork death) gave name to an issue
which had long gone unnoticed or ignored, thus granting proper form
to this problem within Japan. Overseas, the term karoshi came to serve
as a global linguistic signifier for a situation that appears unthinkable byinternational standards. However, at this point, we may do better to reconsider the use of this word. Though this word adopts a mild tone thatputs its emphasis upon the ultimate limit of a working body’s capacity
for endurance, this phenomenon at its core is the death of a corporate
slave. A slave is one who has had their freedom stripped from them, one
whose basic human dignity has become violated. Regardless of whether
this forcible deprivation of their liberty is something evident in its hardbrutality, or something shrewder and seemingly softer, a slave is a slave.
Indeed, this slavery manifests itself in a great many ways. Some areslaves all dolled up in fashionable wears, while others are slaves soakedin sweat, suffering from malnutrition.

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Being unaware of the fact that you are a slave means that you are
not aware of the possibility of using the word “slavery” to describe yoursituation. It means too that you are not able to recognize the dominant power structures within the system and lifeworld, which are usually invisible and hidden. If you cannot see that the phrase “work-stylechanging reform” introduced by the government is an ambiguous term
designed to disguise an insidious “workforce rearrangement policy,”
then, you are already a step closer to enslavement. Only that awarenesscan open the door to escape from your circumstances, in which you arehelpless against the powerful.
At this stage, it seems to be too late for a fight to rid the lifeworld of its
colonizers—too late to organize a battle of anti-colonial liberation. I believe that we must not focus on such a large-scale stage and—instead—start thinking about a far more immediate and concrete struggle for the
emancipation of slaves.
I believe that, in this era of the backlash, the most direct, clear-cut,
and understandable approach is to observe the world from a victimcentered viewpoint. Victims are to creat through the wrongdoing, corruption, evil, and omission caused as an inevitable consequence of
those political/economic/social powers operating on both a global
and national scale. That is to say; we must focus on the victims of injustice. Enter: investigative journalism of the twenty-first century with
its worldwide countermovement. The key points here are the following two. Firstly, it is a movement carried out by journalists across national boundaries. Secondly, it takes a clear stance resisting the various
absurdities of our modern world and the powers responsible for theircreation.
By my interpretation, this movement of investigative journalism isdriven by a mission to monitor the powers at the root of those various
absurdities, maintaining an attitude and practice that stands in a confrontational, controversial and uncompromising manner against power.
This manner, called antagonism, burns at the core of this movement.
Additionally, another element central to this investigative journalism isthe autonomy of individual journalists. It is the individual who must

make the active, independent decision to stand for the salvation of victims and the emancipation of slaves. Only an individual can combat theofficial story—manufactured, distributed, and brazenly normalized bythose that side with power. Only the individual can break down that official story by offering an alternative narrative to be produced and transmitted for the public.
Therefore, we will define investigative journalism as a movement—an“ism”—established upon three elements: a central focus on the victim, asense of antagonism, and the autonomy of journalists. Though this may
not change the fundamentals of the system (as defined by Habermas),
it might end specific instances of injustice. One must admit that thisis a strategic retreat, cornered as we are in an era of the backlash. But,
inevitably, there are people to be saved through such struggles fought
amid the details and indivisual cases. That is the effect and the valueof eliminating each injustice, one at a time. As I see it, this is not an
abstract or macroscopic path—not some strategy given by leaders fromon high. Instead, the conception of justice held by investigative journalists today—the standpoint adopted by these warriors who are battlingamidst a strategic retreat—is something more microscopic and specific.
It starts with the salvation of those directly affected—the victims—andthus, seeks to end that particular injustice.

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10. Antagonism and investigative journalism
At this point, let us take a moment to dwell a little on the idea of antagonism. Generally, antagonism denotes an oppositional or hostile relationship between two or more entities within the same category. For
instance, the antagonism between the ruling party and the opposition
is a conflict between political parties. The antagonistic controtation
between the working class and upper class is a conflict between social classes. Therefore, the term is usually in use to indicate a situation
wherein the sides involved each hold mutually exclusive interests thatclash as a consequence. If the opposition party beats the ruling party
through their contest, the former will replace the latter and take office.
Similarly, in the case of a class struggle, if the proletariats defeat theTHE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

The Public Sphere, Antagonism, and Journalism

bourgeoisie, they will then hold power.
Should they concede or compromise in their conflict—should they
moderate or abandon their interests—their very identities will crumble.
To maintain their integrity, they must stake out their antagonism. There
are some conflicts and differences within our world which will not andcannot ever disappear.
Compared to this common conception of antagonism, the antagonism which I’m calling for—the antagonism of investigative journalism—may be a little irregular. Then, what sort of relationship does “anattitude and practice based on a confrontational, controversial, and uncompromising manner against power” actually entail? The key here isthat this “power” and journalism do not exist within the same category.
They do indeed maintain a confrontational relationship, but journalism is neither hostile to power nor a rival to power. Journalism does notintend to take the place of that power. For journalism, power is not theenemy. The real enemy of journalism dwells only within itself.
Similarly, while there are some amongst those various powers which
are hostile to critical journalism, the “civilized power” (i.e., the power
which hasn’t become barbarous) does not direct hostility against the essential presence of journalism, although they may find it annoying. The“civilized power” would have understood that journalism is not there
to supplant it. The relationship of antagonism between journalism andpower is not one wherein these two forces compete upon some shared
arena. Of course, there are some self-declared “journalists” who try toenter that same arena of power and take part in the competition. This
sect actively aims to become another political player capable of directing politics. This kind of behavior is—however—a grave transgression.
If you want to control politics, you shouldn’t position yourself within
the field of journalism. Instead, you should make a proper, legitimate
entrance into that political arena to officially join that fight for power
alongside the parties and politicians. An attempt to direct politics fromwithin the field of journalism is tantamount to smuggling. Still, there
are all too many active reporters—and students aspiring to becomesuch reporters—who cannot see this smuggling for what it is.

11. The antagonism of the Seven Samurai
Why does investigative journalism monitor power? Why does it consciously choose to take on this task? It is not out of some hostile aim tosupplant said power. But, instead, investigative journalism throws itself
into this activity of monitoring power because it aims to save those victims that are invariably created by the actions of authority. On reflection, one could say that the general relationship between power and its
victims can be broadly defined as a link between the ruler and ruled,between the governing power and governed people—in other words, a
relationship between two things within the same category. Therefore—
in principle—that more common conception of antagonism can be applied to their relationship.
However, this relationship between power and its victims—the relationship between those that use power and those that suffer power—isvery clearly extremely skewered and asymmetric. The victims are utterly
powerless and devoid of hope. So, the investigative journalist backs
their side. Within this context, the investigative journalist is aligningthemselves with the latent antagonism of those victims by adopting
the attitude of a confrontational, controversial and uncompromisingmanner against the power to settle the score for those victims—an act
comparable to blood donation and transfusion. Thus, investigative journalism’s antagonism and it’s confronting to the power is then exercisedby way of their victims and directed against those powers. This routecomes from the fact that the work of a watchdog—the act of journalism—is not a task performed for the sake of one’s benefit. Instead, it isan activity carried out on behalf of the civil society of private persons,for the benefit of civil society. To put it another way, it is the job of aprofessional representative—moreover, a representative that comes inof their own volition.
In this sense, one might say that investigative journalism follows themodel of the Seven Samurai—that 1954 film directed by Kurosawa Akira.
It wouldn’t do to recite a full film synopsis, but the film sets the story in
the Japanese medieval era without a ruling order. It tells the story of how
some villagers who had been besieged by rogue-samurai-turned-bandits,

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hired seven samurai, and fought to protect their village. And then they
culminated in their eventual “victory.” One should note that the battle
fought by those seven samurai is not one of vengeance. Vengeance—or,a vendetta—denotes an act of retribution, executed to settle the score
on behalf of one’s family or master or some such entity that is integral to
one’s own identity. Indeed, it was a principle of 有縁 (uen – boundedness)
accepted and applied by feudal systems.
The eponymous seven samurai happen to hear of the villagers’ plightduring their wanderings, and angry at the harm done to these villagers by those bandits. The seven samurai think, “we cannot let them getaway with it.” Therefore, by their sense of justice, the seven samurai
take up the contract to help the villagers. Thus, a kind of association ofmavericks for justice happens to emerge spontaneously. Nevertheless,they’ve no kinship with these villagers. The two groups have nothing
to do with each other. After all, these seven are master-less samurai
wandering down the highway; they have, of course, nothing to do withthese peasants. In other words, they are working with a principle of 無
縁 (muen – unboundedness). If they feel the need to do right, they enter
the fray against any tyrannical opponent who wields the power to oppress, and they will do it in exchange for just “three meals a day.” Thatis their style. Perhaps, at the end of the day, when the battle is over, they
may only be left to murmur “again we are defeated,” but even then, evenso … It is the antagonism of the Seven Samurai, and, in my opinion, theantagonism of investigative journalism is the same.
What did Kurosawa Akira want to tell us through that ending?
Wherein—despite these two parties fighting side by side—the peasantfarmers, in living with the collective community, stand victorious, while
those free-lance samurai, in living outside of community principles, experience defeat.

The Public Sphere, Antagonism, and Journalism

met Waseda Chronicle
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, is a volunteer at that post. At the sametime, his primary paid profession lies in the field of academia, as a professor at the University of California, Irvine. It is his latter title that interests me here; for, he is not only a professor of law but a “Clinical Professorof Law.” What would it be in Japanese? Now, he is also the director of an
educational research program called the International Justice Clinic. On
their website, the organization’s introduction page opens with the following first sentence: “The students in the International Justice Clinic
work with activists, lawyers, diplomats, scholars and NGOs at home
and around the world to develop and implement advocacy strategies
concerning accountability for violations of human rights.” When David
Kaye visited Japan to assess the country’s condition, in April 2016, I met
with him twice—once at the beginning of his investigation and again at
the end. As I recall, he had brought along two students as his assistants,
one of whom could speak Japanese. Indeed, Kaye was educating his students, with a practical learning experience, through his volunteer workfor the UN. In his report to the Human Rights Council, he warned ofsevere threats to the independence of the press in Japan.
Kaye’s job title gave me a flash of inspiration. I realized that I was, infact, a “Clinical Professor of Sociology.”
Is it even possible to teach and train journalists within Japanese
universities? In some senses, this entire education project has also
been a social experiment performed in association with our students.
Although, as a part of the broader effort to improve journalism, it was
intended as an indirect route to reform via the cultivation of humanresources. However, the rapid decline of our situation made it quite
clear that we were out of time. The advancement of human resources
is a long-term process. But, just as I was grappling with this issue, I waspresented with the opportunity to perform a social experiment throughmore direct means. That was a route through which we might improve
journalism by actually directly participating in the activity of journalism
itself. Thus, I began my second term in “Clinical Sociology.”
On the 11th of March 2016, the Waseda Investigative Journalism
Project was founded by journalists in the Institute for Journalism at
Waseda University. On the 1st of February 2017, Waseda Chronicle began

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the online publication of its very first feature series, “Journalism for Sale.”This startup was an attempt to catch Japan up with the movement ofinvestigative journalism sweeping across Asia and the world. From myperspective, Waseda Chronicle was the start of a social experimentstructured around two key questions. Firstly, how exactly does one go
about creating, expressing, and presenting products of investigative
journalism that fulfill all of our criteria mentioned above? Secondly,
what are the financial resources and business model best suited for thesustainable growth of such a news organization? Hence, the field of thisexperiment would be Japan’s civil society. How might civil society react
or respond to this developmental experiment? After all, such a news
organization could hold little reason to exist without the interest andsupport from civil society.
As a companion to this project called Waseda Chronicle, I have spent
the last two years or so in a constant hectic cycle of entering discussions with those directly involved in the project—the people of Waseda
Chronicle—then deliberating and writing my articles. And also, I havebeen meeting with the participants/citizens at various events to talk,think, and write yet more articles.5 Indeed, I have been allowed to practice “clinical sociology” to my heart’s content. Something which I would
have been unable to achieve alone, if not for those journalists who answered the call of this current innovation in journalism. Thanks to them,
I have been able to broaden my ideas and perspective by accompanying
them to observe their endeavor as people directly involved in this movement. Last year, I did my part to help Waseda Chronicle become an official member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN).
I also provided support for its members’ presentations during our participation in the Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC) heldin South Africa. So, quite a lot has happened in just under two years—
right before my retirement from this university. And, I’m most grateful to those people at Waseda Chronicle for this time spent striving,
through thick or thin, towards new goals.
However, the trial is only now entering its most critical stage. This
February, Waseda Chronicle separated itself from the Institute for
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Journalism, thereby breaking away from Waseda University as a whole.
It has instead become an independent non-profit organization to proceed with its activities as a newsroom specializing in the field of investigative journalism while operating under the concept of a “Journalism
NGO.” Its name will remain the same.6 I would say that—at this point—
the university has fulfilled its role as an incubator for innovation.
Henceforth, civil society will have to look after Waseda Chronicle. Thatis, only if the members of civil society think they need someone to perform the social functions of a watchdog to the power. If they don’t feel
this need, then, that’s that.
13. “To You, My Students” to myself
Miyazawa Kenji (1896–1933), who was a poet, fairy tale writer, and ateacher at an agricultural high school, left in his notebook an incomplete piece of poetry “To You, My Students.” The poetry sounds like aspeech given before his students on graduation day or, perhaps, likewords of farewell uttered on the day he leaves the school. Today—on
the day I graduate from this stage of my career and bid farewell to theuniversity—I would like to address that poem to myself, with particularemphasis on the following passage:
With the black bloom called Sakinohaka
The revolution will be here before long
It appears as a dispatched single ray
And a sealed south wind as well
These four lines are a mystery. Of course, there is no actual flower
named Sakinohaka. Ever since I first read this poem, I’ve always wondered what that black bloom entails and what sort of revolution mightcome with it. To this day, I do not know. After I leave our university,
I intend to keep pondering these questions.
Thank you, everyone.

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Notes
1. This article is a revised version of the manuscript for my “farewell lecture”
held in Waseda University, Block 15, Classroom 02, on the 3rd of February,
2018.
2. The full text in Japanese can be read online at http://www.hanadataz.jp/01/
01dengon/2010/07/dengon20107.htm
3. The number of students taking the class “introduction to journalism” hadfluctuated around the higher end of the 400s between 2009 and 2015 (with apeak of 561 students in 2012). But, this suddenly dropped down into the 100s
in 2016 (when just 152 students completed the class), with only 101 students
completing it in 2017.
4. In truth, for me, this operation wasn’t just meant for those students who
would go on to find employment in the media industry/organizations. It
rested with all those that I taught who would then go onto life within thefield of society as workers and citizens, too. I think of every single seminar
student that passed through my hands as a warrior.
5. These articles were all included in the book, Tasturo Hanada 花田達朗. ジャー
ナリズムコレクション 第 2 巻 ジャーナリズムの実践：主体・活動と倫理・教育 2（2011‒, 彩流社, 2018年 [ Collected Works of HANADA Taturo, Volume Two, The
2017）
Practice of Journalism – Agent/Activity and Ethics/Education 2 (2011–2017),
Tokyo: Sairyusha, 2018.]

Part IIInternational Symposiumon Investigative Journalism
in Tokyo and After

6. After declaring its independence from the university, Waseda Chronicle
began publishing its second feature series “Forced Sterilization” on the 13thof February 2018. This release also marked the start of its crowdfunding
effort.

Initially, this essay appeared in Japanese in the next edition: “Koukyouken,
Antagonism, soshite Janarizumu” 公共圏、アンタゴニズム、そしてジャーナリズム.
Sekai 世界 No. 909 (June 2018): 100–113.
TEZUKA Mafuyu translated this essay into English, and the author edited thetranslation.

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Responding to the recommendations of theUnited Nations Special Rapporteur on the rightto freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye,addressed to Japanese journalists

Responding to the recommendations of David Kaye

Welcome to the symposium on “Investigative Journalism in the Regionsof Asia: Perspectives and Prospects”! Above all, I would like to express
my deepest gratitude to the co-host organization, Committee to Protect
Journalists, CPJ, which is a global NGO, for a significant corroboration.
Without CPJ’s initiative and collaboration, I couldn’t prepare the way forand hold this international journalism conference in Tokyo. Today I am
filled with appreciation to all members of the CPJ delegation attending
here and the invited panelists from abroad.
This symposium aims to consider the state of journalism, journalists,and civil society, not from a national perspective, let alone the narrow
view of the Japanese media company or the Masukomi – our establishedmedia – but from a global and universal perspective.
Journalism is a thought and activity borne from the conditions thatcreated our modern era. The modern state was formed around a designin which civil society entrusts governance to a governmental structurecomposed of the three powers: parliament, the courts, and the administration. At the same time, civil society determined a contract of governance; in other words, a constitution, containing stipulations thatparliament, the courts, and the administration cannot breach fundamental human rights. This thought, in essence, means civil society desired and demanded that the state keep that promise. Also, civil society
concluded to create the function to monitor the government whether
it holds accountability throughout its activities without falling into injustice, corruption, negligence or anything of the wrongdoing. That role

was entrusted to journalism. Thus, to protect this journalism and theactivities that constitute it, it was determined that the freedom of expression, the freedom of the press, should head the list of stipulations
about fundmental human rights within the constitution.
Based on the lessons of history, authority indeed holds immense
power, inevitably falling to corruption within any country. Once suchabuses of power become rampant, it becomes an unstoppable force.
It is precisely to prevent this that journalism is embedded in the democracy, to begin with, serving as a force to manage authority. It is in thissense that journalism’s function of monitoring power as a watchdog has,mostly, been termed an aid to civil society: a public service. The principle of politics through modern democracy, one that we have all learnedin school and already hold to be common sense, that of a “government of
the people, by the people, for the people” as stated by Abraham Lincoln
in his Gettysburg Address of 1863, was supposed to be manifested andrealized within the system I have described. Those “people” are the constituent members of civil society – meaning every one of us.
At times, journalism has fulfilled its mission to monitor governmental authority with resolution, and glory, while, at others, it has been
badly defeated. Or else, in many instances, it has willfully abandoned
that mission and, actively or passively, become but a subordinate tothose governmental authorities and the major corporations or organized crime groups that they collude with, consequently betraying thetrust of civil society, casting it into the very depths of calamity.
Then, dear journalists, members of civil society, what is the state ofjournalism today? As you are all aware, journalism within every country,
including here in Japan, is in a difficult situation. Amid changes to thepolitical, economic, social, and technological landscape, faced, especially, with political and economic threats, journalism stands before anew, genuine crisis; that of journalism being unable, unwilling, and, indeed, not acting to fulfill its fundamental mission properly. For journalists trying to achieve that mission, it is an existential crisis as well as afunctional crisis. It is a crisis that will come to question the very reason
for being a journalist.

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Symposium opening address
HANADA TatsuroTHE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

Responding to the recommendations of David KayeWhen a crisis like this emerges, those affected begin attempts to overcome it, joining with their allies to form movements tackling this threat.
The same applies to journalists. Journalists the world over have always
started efforts to recover whenever they’ve seen their power weaken:
in other words, attempts at self-reform and innovation. Today, thatmovement rallies under the banner of “Investigative Journalism.” Themovement aims to serve as a watchdog, producing journalistic works,
getting results, living up to the expectations of readers and audiences,fulfilling that duty given by civil society through the practice of investigative journalism. That is how journalism can show its accountability
to civil society. This movement is driven and carried by various journalists and various organizations. The CPJ is one of these, as is the Global
Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN), who are also collaborators tothis symposium.
Now, at this point, I would like to take a little time to introduce thehost of this conference, the Waseda University Institute for Journalism.
The institute was founded in 2015 to contribute to the improvementand development of journalism. To take part in that global movement
towards self-innovation, the institute set up the Waseda Investigative
Journalism Project (WIJP) in the autumn of that same year and, after
a period of preparation, began publishing online under the name of
Waseda Chronicle in February, this year, with our first feature entitled“Journalism for Sale,” a still ongoing series.
Waseda Chronicle is a social experiment to determine the possibilities for investigative journalism within Japan. It holds two key objectives.
The first is to determine what new narrative of investigative journalism, one can carve out, separate from the established existing media ofJapan. The other is to learn how one might create an organizational andfinancial model that can continue to sustain such activities. Waseda
Chronicle is a news organization based in a university like those within
the University of California, Berkeley, and the American University inWashington DC But I am currently feeling the full force of the fact thatthe circumstances under which we must operate here are fundamentally different from the states in the USA. In particular, the conditions

surrounding fundraising are radically different from those in the USA.
Now, for today’s symposium, in the first half, we will discuss the past,present, and future of investigative reporting within Japan. In the second half, the representatives of 4 investigative news organizations fromaround Asia will join us in the hall to discuss their current and futuregoals, objectives, and obstacles. Speaking of which, as you journalists
and members of civil society here today may know, the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Professor David Kaye, held a press conference at Sophia University, the day before yesterday. His final reporton Japan was released at the end of last month and will soon be submitted to the Commission on Human Rights. At that conference, Professor
Kaye placed the most weight upon “the independence of the media.”And, what left an even more profound impression on my mind was how,in discussing this, Professor Kaye stressed both the need for solidarity
among journalists and the need to develop investigative journalism.
Unlike the rest of his recommendations, which were directed at the government or media corporations, this one was a recommendation, andat the same time, a message aimed at the journalists of Japan. However,
unfortunately, none of the newspaper reports from the following day
truly touched upon this.
The issue of what sort of journalism we adopt, and what results we
expect of it, is ours to wrestle with. Every one of us here today is directly involved in this issue. Indeed, this is a common objective, thattranscends national boundaries, shared by journalists active on a global
level and by a global civil society. How should we tackle that objective?
And what actions should we take? More what support and contribution can we provide? So, I would like to end my address with the hopethat we might consider these issues through our conference today, andthat I might contribute to the deepening of this discussion. Thank youvery much.

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GIJN invite you to join us

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GIJN invite you to join us

Thank you for having me. I’m here to speak about collaborative journalism, and how being alone is not, well, that good. Still, I’ll try anyway tospread the message from the Global Investigative Journalism Network.
I’m kind of an ambassador, but I’m not worthy of representing all the extraordinary journalists who are part of the network. My name is Alessia
Cerantola. I’m a journalist originally from Italy.
So let me give you my perspective of what the Global Investigative
Network is for my group and me. In 2011, when Japan was facing theaftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, and then the Fukushima
nuclear crisis, in another part of the world in Kyiv, Ukraine, a meetingof the Global Investigative Journalism Conference was taking place.
During that meeting, a group of Italian journalists met for the first time.
I was one of them. We were journalists coming from completely different backgrounds, having different interests. My main focus is Japan;
other journalists were covering other parts of the world or coveringother issues.
But after this conference, where we met for the first time, we realizedthat we shared the same values, the same way of doing journalism, thesame mission, and also a wish. We shared a wish of creating in our own
country, in Italy, a center for investigative journalism based on the U. K.
or U. S. models. And so we did. A couple of months after this meeting,
we co-founded the first center for investigative journalism in my country. It’s called IRPI and stands for Investigative Reporting Project Italy.
We mainly focus on Italy, but we cover transnational issues, and someof us, including me, sometimes cover cases or crimes not related toour country.
Basically what we focus on is corruption and organized crime. You

know we have famous mafias in our country. Not one mafia, but fourkinds of mafias. So we are very international with that. Well, we have a
lot of jobs and topics we have to cover. So what I want to say is thanks
to this conference, and thanks to the Global Investigative Journalism
Conference. This is one of the effects, one of the results of these kindsof meetings: Bringing together people with different backgrounds, withdifferent interests, but with the same values, to create new groups, newassociations for promoting investigative journalism around the world.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network is an international association of 145 nonprofit organizations from around the world, from62 countries, to encourage journalists in doing investigative journalism, and to support colleagues from around the world in doing theirjob properly, through giving them training, conferences, and other support, also legal support in case they need it. So, the Global Investigative
Journalism Network publishes a website, you can see it at www.gijn.
org. They publish in five languages. Hopefully, in the future, it will be inJapanese, who knows?
They publish articles related to investigative journalism, how to do
our jobs. We share information and best practices on how to do our job.
And even if it’s an association of NPOs, other journalists who are notpart of these, who are just staff writers that report for their newspapers
or TV outlets, can join and follow the Global Investigative Journalism
Network through its social media: Facebook, Twitter, it’s very well-coordinated. Every two years, the network organizes an international conference called the Global Investigative Journalism Conference. This year
it will be in Johannesburg, in November, so save the date.
November 16 is the next meeting. It’s a huge and important chancefor investigative journalists to meet and to share what they have done
over the year and to ask colleagues from other countries to collaborate
to pursue their investigation. This meeting is a critical moment for us
as journalists because we have the chance to meet people that, over theyear, we meet online using email. It’s a chance to meet our colleagues inperson. Also, it’s a chance to create new groups and new teams. It wasalso thanks to one of these meetings that some of our reporters created

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the team that published the Panama Papers last year in April.
So, it is also an opportunity for Japanese reporters to join this network if they feel isolated in their own country in doing investigative
journalism. Joining this group, they have the chance to share their ideas
on doing investigative journalism, and they can do cross-border, transnational investigations, going beyond the censorship in their own country, if it exists. So this is, for example, what we did as Italian journalists.
We have many extraordinary journalists in Italy who have been covering
the mafia in our own country, for years. But they were isolated. They
wrote just in Italian for our own country.
But having the chance to collaborate with international journalists,
doing transnational coverage, we were able to empower the impactthat our investigation had. This is a valuable tool that I hope that morejournalists, especially from Japan, can use to have more significant impact in your job and to feel less isolated. So save the date for the South
African meeting. I hope we can meet again, there, and good luck, ganbare, in Japanese, to all of you. So I hope that we can collaborate for the
next investigation. Who knows? Thank you. Arigatou gozaimashita.

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Japan’s experience with investigative journalism
Panel discussion 1
Panelists:
YORIMITSU Taka’aki, former investigative division chief, The Asahi
ShimbunKUMADA Yasunobu, current affairs division deputy-head, NHK
ISHIMARU Jiro, journalist, Asia Press Network
Martin Fackler, former Tokyo bureau chief, The New York Times
Moderator:
Steven Butler, Asia program coordinator, Committee to Protect
Journalists (CPJ)
Steven Butler
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Professor Hanada, for inviting
everyone here and for setting the stage for this kind of conversation,
which I think is vital for Japan and all of us. I’m really honored to besitting on stage with these accomplished journalists who have extensive experience reporting in Japan.
I hope we’ll have a useful discussion about what has worked, what
hasn’t worked, and what might work in the future of investigative
journalism in Japan. I think it’s safe to say we’re all here because webelieve investigative journalism is a good idea, and we’d like to findways to encourage it. Just let me briefly introduce the journalists who
are going to help us try to understand what’s going on.
First of all there’s Taka’aki Yorimitsu, who ran the investigativedesk of The Asahi Shimbun during the Fukushima nuclear crisis;
Yasunobu Kumada, an award-winner and deputy-head of the current
affairs division at NHK; Jiro Ishimaru of the Asia Press Network, who
has made extraordinary efforts to lift the veil on what is happening
in North Korea—he has a lot of stories to tell us; and finally Martin
Fackler, who’s the former New York Times Tokyo bureau chief. He was
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Japan’s experience with investigative journalism

something of a savant on the issues of the Japanese press, the successes, and the failures. He knows a lot more about this than I do, andI think he’ll be able to add quite a lot of wisdom.
By investigative journalism, we can mean many different things,
but at heart, it’s reporters trying to unearth source material for stories. That takes a lot of hard digging because no one is just giving it
up to everybody. And usually people in power, in the public or private sectors, don’t want to see this information in the public realm.
So, you can’t just show up at a press conference and have it handed
to you.
It’s hard work. It’s also expensive. Because it’s time-consuming andlabor-intensive, many news organizations facing financial pressure
have trimmed or eliminated investigative operations. The volume
of input to output can be extremely high. Sometimes it’s dangerous
to the reporters because making information public can harm thepeople whose secrets are exposed, and sometimes those people havethe power to retaliate. Attacks on investigative journalists around theworld keep my organization, the Committee to Protect Journalists,very busy. We document those attacks, call on authorities to provide
protection, and put pressure to get journalists out of jail. Or, when
the ultimate tragedy results, we put pressure on governments to find,prosecute, and punish those who kill journalists, which is the ultimate form of censorship. Fortunately, that sort of thing is not happening in Japan.
Of course, sometimes the opposite happens, as when corrupt
government officials, businessmen, or even leaders of charitable organizations land in jail or are thrown out of office. Or when important public policies change for the better when the truth comes out.
Investigative journalism can be very difficult to fit into larger news
organizations that principally produce other kinds of news products.
Hard-hitting investigative stories can attract readers and viewers, butthey also potentially can harm the business interests of a large news
organization by affecting advertising or other business relationships.
And keeping investigative operations separate from other news

organizations can be a challenge for management.
The practice of investigative journalism has waxed and waned in
the United States. We think of the early heyday as the beginning of
the 20th century, when journalists uncovered municipal corruption
or horrible working conditions in the meatpacking industry. That’s
when Teddy Roosevelt coined the term “muckraking” as an insult,but of course, it stuck. And most journalists now wear the title of“muckraker” with pride. The 1960s witnessed another outpouring ofinvestigator effort, when journalists like David Halberstam uncovered lies that were being told about the Vietnam War. Investigative
journalism flourishes when governments or businesses lie, cheat,and deceive the public.
And unfortunately, that happens a lot. We are arguably seeing
another renaissance of investigative reporting that has now gone
global in spite of the business challenges facing the news industry.
Investigative efforts have been hived off into separate organizations
like ProPublica in the United States, launched with the support ofone wealthy family but now funded by a wide range of foundations
and individuals.
In addition to the sort of digging journalist dramatized in themovie Spotlight, reporters are learning how to assemble and analyze data. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
helped lead the global effort to analyze the Panama Papers, and weare fortunate today to have Alessia Cerantola to tell us about the
Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN), which helped provide training and access to other resources.
This afternoon, we are inevitably going to discuss why investigative journalism is difficult in Japan. But it is important to keep
in mind that it is difficult everywhere. It is not uniquely difficult inJapan, or, if there are unique aspects to working in Japan, Japanese
investigative journalists are certainly not alone in facing big obstacles to practicing their craft. With that in mind, I’d like to invite ourJapanese colleagues to take a few minutes to describe their own experience of muckraking in Japan, and for Martin perhaps to give us

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a bit of reflection and overview on the kind of experience that theydescribe to us. Yorimitsu-san, would you like to go first?
YORIMITSU Taka’aki
Hello, everyone, I’m Yorimitsu. I formerly served as The Asahi
Shimbun’s investigative division chief. I was with the Asahi for eight
and a half years, and I also worked at a local paper in Kochi Prefecture.
I’m going to talk about my experiences working for the local newspaper. I have 35 years of experience in journalism. In the past 35 years,
how and what Japanese journalists write is supposed to be of highquality. When I first became a journalist, good journalists were defined as those knowing how to challenge power and influential leaders. That’s what we considered a good journalist.
My first job as a journalist was at Kochi Shimbun. I think this paper
had one of the largest population-to-readership ratios. The strengthof a newspaper depends on its readership, and this paper had a very
high market share. Its senior writers were also quite strong in challenging influential leaders. For example, they had access to the governor and the head of the police department as well. So, they were very
successful at access journalism, and I really admired them.
They were accessing the influential leaders, gaining information,
and writing articles. In a sense, they were gaining access to information that would be revealed anyway. To get such information half a
day earlier, for example, is not special. Kochi Shimbun would start
to write about it a half-day earlier than the other newspapers. Now,
those writers were proud of revealing information a half-day earlier,but this kind of information would be revealed anyway, and so myimmediate seniors started to talk about how they could be doing better work.
What did they do? It was the start of investigative reporting. In
1993, there were some business and trips made by the prefectural government officials that hadn’t actually taken place. There were travel
expenses that were budgeted, and sometimes they had some unused
funds, and they accumulated such unused funds. When a central
government official came over to Kochi Prefecture, they used those

funds for entertainment.
Kochi Shimbun reported that the amount was about 200 million
yen (about $1.9 million) a year. The prefectural government has thelargest market share of Kochi Shimbun, and there was fighting between the two. Some people were concerned, but in the end, nothing
happened. Then in 2000, Kochi Shimbun reported that the prefectural government and some influential leaders loaned 1 billion yen(about $9.3 million) without permission. After I left the paper, it wasreported that the Kochi Prefectural Police also had a slush fund.
Gaining information from influential leaders had been Kochi
Shimbun’s previous style of journalism, but we switched our approachto revealing what those political leaders were doing. That was thestarting point for me in investigative reporting. During the process, I
think we didn’t always know how to proceed, and we tried to rely on
different kinds of information sources, for example, making use of
the freedom of information legislation.
By now, what Kochi Shimbun does is not unique. Gaining access to
the government and from that stage writing articles against the government or the prefectural government—that kind of shift is natural.
Looking at other local newspapers, they also started to embark on
investigative reporting.
So, what is supposed to be investigated and reported? Opportunities will not simply fall into our hands. Instead, we need to see that
there are clues everywhere. In whatever reporting and newsgathering, you are engaged in, you can identify clues to the problems. Whatmatters is how to capture that clue and write an article. Individualjournalists’ mindsets are extremely important; this is the first point.
The second point, and this sounds somewhat contradictory to thefirst point, is that the organization plays an important role.
At least half of young journalists express the desire to engage in investigative journalism. But it isn’t easy for them to do so because they
are very busy with other assignments. There was only one journalist
working for the bureau that I headed, so you can imagine how busy
I was. Japanese newspapers try to cover everything. For example,

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traffic accidents, some other accidents, events, elections, politics,
and sports. They are all covered in the same newspaper. Trying tocover so many different topics and events makes you quite busy.
The advantage and the weakness of the Japanese press are that it
does not abandon anything. But journalists are limited in time, so adecision has to be made: What is to be prioritized? That is the role
the organization is supposed to play. I do believe that Japanese newspapers have quality that we can be proud of; the quality of journalists
is extremely high. For example, The Asahi Shimbun has over 2,000
journalists. But because all these journalists are very busy, Japanesejournalism overall is not that active in investigative journalism. It is amatter of organizational priorities.
Investigative journalism is possible if the organization decides to
set up a special framework for journalists to do so. I do not knowmuch about foreign journalism, but what characterizes the Japanesepress is what I call the “ground war.” Journalists are sent into thefield. That kind of practice is meant to teach young journalists theropes; they are sent to visit households to gather information andnews. Young journalists are trained this way, and I think it’s an effective method.
Therefore, generally speaking, I do think that Japanese journalists
are capable. But the issue is how to make the best use of journalists’ talents. I belonged to journalism organizations for many years,
and so I can give this insight from an organizational perspective. If
Japanese journalists are going to be made use of, there is still a lot ofopportunities available in the Japanese press.
Steven Butler
Thank you very much. We can now hear from Kumada-san about his
exploits at NHK.
KUMADA Yasunobu
My name is Kumada, and I work for NHK. I’m pleased to be here; NHK
is a public broadcasting organization, so we are not usually invited toevents like this. That is perhaps because NHK is generally perceived
as being close to the national government. My staff told me to say

this: “We are not for the state government; we are for the public.”
The central government may want certain things not to be known
to the public. But NHK’s role is still to convey this information. In aplace like NHK, there are many reporters who have close access to
top government and bureaucracy leaders. Of course, that’s necessary,and there is specific information you can only get from that close access. But there are many reporters working on investigative reporting.
Those reporters work every day to dig up stories that the powerful,
the rich, and criminals would like to hide.
I will not talk about my own experience because it will take toomuch time; I will instead talk about NHK’s role as a public organization. NHK is good at certain kinds of journalism, in particular, dealing with massive amounts of data and materials. We analyze andreport on them. NHK’s investigative reporting began in 2001 with astory about Minamata disease. In 2001, freedom of information legislation was introduced. Since that system was instituted, we brought
in massive amounts of data and materials, analyzed them, and thenproduced a program.
The 2004 Japanese national highways case is another excellent
example. At that time, there were parliamentarians in the JapaneseDiet with connection to the highways, and they were very powerful.
Their interests were connected with railway operations, the roads
that would be built across Japan, and the promise that it would bemade free of charge. But tolls were raised year after year. Something
was wrong with this system. Why was this happening? We wanted to
expose what was going on behind the scenes. So, we brought in andanalyzed 10,000 pages of information, and we interviewed people to
get witnesses’ testimonies as well. And then, we found out about unsubstantiated accounting. That was the reason for the bloated accounting among the highway corporations. After this program, NHK
specials were regarded as synonymous with investigative reporting.
This is still going on today. People, money, and time will usually haveto be put into this kind of journalism.
We also make an effort to notice local reporters. During the

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earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, 74 school children diedat Okawa Elementary School. Why weren’t they able to evacuate?
Journalists obtained the evacuation manual through a freedom of
information request. We reported on the manual because it hadn’t
included an evacuation place. It said to go to a nearby park, but there
was no nearby park for that particular elementary school. All news
organizations reported on that.
But why was such an evacuation manual created in the firstplace? That was the question. So we collected manuals from various municipalities. More than 50 percent of the elementary schools
in areas at risk from tsunami had no tsunami evacuation plan. The
tsunami didn’t hit some elementary schools, but many schools could
have faced tragedy. The reason was that the evacuation manuals
had been created from a template made by Ishinomaki City 10 years
prior. It was distributed to various schools as “reference materials.”
Schoolteachers are not experts on disasters. Based on these reference materials, school-specific manuals were supposed to be written.
But the reference manual’s authors lived far from the ocean, so there
was no mention of tsunami.
In some cases, the reference manual had simply been copied andpasted. This was not only a problem for Okawa Elementary School.
All schools across Japan and all municipalities’ disaster manuals havethis kind of problem. In Niigata Prefecture, there was snow disastermaterial written by the same consultant. But the consultant worked
in western Japan, where there is no snow. So a universal problem was
exposed. This is what we do. Young local reporters are given opportunities to dig up a story, and we help them.
We get a lot of information through freedom of information requests. Money leaves traces. There was a big case in 2010: Public
documents called “administrative project review sheets” were introduced to help properly allocate the Japanese budget. I always used toask, “What is the purpose?” and “How much money was used?” forvarious parts of the national budget. The review sheets made it easier
to discuss the national budget. At the time, open data was becoming
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common around the world. Publicly available information could beanalyzed through investigative reporting.
Eighteen months after March 11, 2011, we ran a program about thecolossal disaster reconstruction budget. We analyzed the administrative project review sheets and looked into debris disposal, public works, procurement, etc. And we realized that the bureaucracies
were racing against one another to ensure their own reconstruction
budget, and to do this sometimes money would be used in places far
from the disaster area. Some projects that had been discontinued before March 11, 2011, were reopened because of the reconstruction budget. NHK’s investigative reporting techniques were fully mobilized to
produce this program.
But still, our program couldn’t only rely on the analysis of thismassive amount of data. The budget was being questioned even
before our reporting, but at the time, the government and bureaucracies didn’t pay any attention to them. They didn’t change their
behavior. We wanted to create an impact. The people creating thebudgets were not visiting the areas affected by the disaster. There
were many people dying because of the disaster, and money was not
being given to those places. That needed to be shown to the public.
Even 18 months after the disaster, only the local reporters in Sendai
and Morioka could find those facts. We wanted to show the reality on
camera in order to really make an impact on viewers.
The reconstruction budget actually came from the reconstruction tax increase. Because everything was in confusion, there weremany people who did not understand that the tax was just for use indisaster-affected areas. We wanted viewers to think about whether it
was right to use the tax increase in this way. Then the viewers would
make their own judgment. Because of our program, the central government and public opinion moved in a major way.
On the other hand, there are certain areas where data is not available at all. One NHK special addressed the phenomenon of “solitary
deaths” taking place in subsidized apartment complexes. I think thiswas the first report on the subject. We looked at the Tokiwadaira
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Apartment Complex in Matsudo City, Chiba Prefecture; it’s a mammoth affordable housing complex.
We first realized there was a story there because a young reporter
was making house calls as he gathered information about a murdercase. He discovered something strange: There was only one person, usually an elderly person, living in each apartment he visited.
Sometimes these people die alone, and sometimes their death will
only be discovered several months later. We wanted to report onthese “solitary deaths.” At the time, municipalities and governments
didn’t have any data about solitary deaths. We formed a reporting
unit, and then we placed a camera in this housing complex. Then, we
got pictures of the people dying alone. This reporting introduced thephrases “solitary death” or “death in loneliness” into broad society.
We exposed various problems, such as lost family connections, theincome gap, unemployment, and so forth.
We thought that social problems were developing, issues that the
government was not aware of, or that it was deliberately ignoring.
Data and materials didn’t exist yet, but we could still dig up information and make reports. We made a special titled “Working Poor.” No
matter how hard you work, you can only earn so much below thepoverty line, and there are so many people who cannot get rich. We
depicted this situation in detail. Until this program, it was not awarethat there was severe and pervasive poverty in Japan. But because ofthis program, the growing income gap has been recognized as a societal problem. “Working poor” has become a new word we introduced
into the Japanese lexicon.
But it’s a challenge when you want to report on a subject without
existent data. First, you want to have a story, a narrative, or a hypothesis. Then you investigate that story, beefing it up with data and materials. But we have to be careful that we are not making convenient
use of any facts or images to support our stories.
If it is said that data does not exist, something it is merely hidden.
I think this trend toward concealing information is becoming stronger in Japan. I’m concerned that our laws are tending more towards

secrecy. Going forward, we have to address these issues.
I don’t want to criticize NHK, but we are public broadcasting, andthe hurdles for getting our stories aired are very high. We ask ourselves: Is it really reportable? There are various pressures, and there
are stable and high hurdles. We are sometimes forced to use ambiguous expressions to get around them. We must continuously ask ourselves how we can deliver investigative reporting. Thank you verymuch.
Steven Butler
Thank you. Now we’ll turn to Ishimaru-san, who is involved in maybe
the most challenging kind of investigative work of anybody.
ISHIMARU Jiro
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Ishimaru, and I’mfrom the Osaka office of Asia Press International (AIP). AIP is an independent organization created in 1987. It is a network organization of
freelance journalists.
API covers specific areas or issues in-depth, and in particular,
supports journalists in Asia. Currently, over 20 Japanese, Koreans,
Chinese, and other Asian journalists are members. We have somefriends working in North Korea as well. Instead of working in thesame organization, API is a network of independent journalists who
are doing their own work.
I have been involved in North Korea for many years. Today, I would
like to share what I experienced in investigative reporting outside thescope of the mainstream media. The picture you see on the screen
was taken in 2008 on the outskirts of Pyongyang. A North Korean, myjournalist partner, took this picture. It looks like nothing special, justshopping in an open-air market. But probably the journalist would
be severely punished if this photo were revealed to the authorities.
That demonstrates the fact that North Korea is one of the most reclusive countries in the world.
Entering North Korea is extremely difficult. And even if you can go
into the country, there are a lot of limitations. I have been to North
Korea three times. Outside of your bedroom, you are always closely

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watched, and you can only see what the North Korean authorities
would like to show to you, like special showcases and gimmicks. The
North Korean authorities have a staged system that can be shown toforeigners.
And another point is that they have their own media strategy. The
national broadcasting organization has the policy to communicate
what they want to talk to the outside. There is growing interest in
North Korea among international media, so there are a lot of different ways to gain access to information. The first is primary information, for example, from the Kyodo, AP, and AFP Pyongyang bureaus.
But, that said, those journalists are not stationed in Pyongyang. On a
day-to-day basis, it is North Korean correspondents who do the coverage. Sometimes you are allowed to enter North Korea. There was asignificant event in April 2017 on the occasion of the 105th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-Sung.
There is also some news coverage conducted in the border areaand even in Russia. These are the sources of our primary information.
Secondary information includes, for example, trade statistics and testimony by defectors. Close to 30,000 defectors reside in South Korea.
There are also leaks by the South Korean authorities. And sometimes,
we use the North Korean state media websites and reports.
Missile launches are often shown on international TV. They all use
footage taken from the state media. The photos and videos of missile
launches are striking images, and the international media tends touse them. As a matter of fact, that is North Korea’s intention. There is
an image they want to project, that North Korea is not lagging behind
the rest of the world. It has modern devices and modern cityscapesand life. That’s the image they would like to project, as well as that
North Korea is a socialist state but that it runs an autonomous andself-reliant economy.
Another reason for frequently showing missile launches is to project an image of power. Making the world see North Korea as a militarily strong country helps protect them. But my interpretation is thatthe military image of the country is much stronger than in reality.
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Another image is that the people are united under the leader. These
kinds of information and images are being communicated across theworld. But I don’t agree with this kind of image.
I visited North Korea in 1995, ’97, and ’98, and what I strongly felt
through these experiences was that you are always watched when
you are out of bed. There was an insurmountable barrier, and only
by crossing barrier would you be able to see the reality. I interviewed
defectors who were living, for example, in China. Through my interviews with those defectors, I came to believe that it was only North
Koreans themselves who would be able to uncover the reality of theircountry. I decided then to form a team with them. My objective is totrain North Korean journalists. They should play the central role ingathering data and reporting it outside the country.
Information about North Korea is difficult to prove, so having
strong evidence is extremely important, such as photos, videos, audio
recordings, and documents. We received 80 copies of a recently revised physics textbook last year from North Korea. And North Korean
soldiers are suffering from malnutrition, and some of them are dying
from hunger.
I mentioned gimmicks. Foreign visitors only see the beautiful aspects of Pyongyang; there is a gimmick behind this. This photo is of isa station in the suburban area. A soldier guards the gate. That meansthat if there is going to be an event in which foreigners may participate, then North Koreans who look suspicious or with knapsacks are
barred from entering, because foreign visitors may see something
they’re not supposed to. So this older man was turned away at theentrance to the station.
This is Ku Gong-Ho, who is a North Korean journalist. My partner
took this video in Pyongyang. Foreign visitors don’t know anything
about Pyongyang; they only know about beautiful places. He wanted
to let the truth be known to the international community. Thank you.
Steven Butler
Thank you very much. Martin, you want to weigh in on some of thethings we’ve talked about?
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Martin Fackler
Yes, thank you, Steve. My job, as I understand it, is to fill in the gaps,
rather than to talk about my own experiences. So, I’ll start by trying
to give some context to what we’ve been hearing.
During the last few days, when the folks from the Committee to
Protect Journalists have been in town, we’ve talked about Japan’s potential as a beacon in Asia for journalistic freedom and freedom ofspeech. And I think that’s entirely possible and true. I think Japan
has enormous potential and, in fact, already is a beacon for the region. And I also believe there is some outstanding investigative journalism in Japan and some excellent journalists. So, I wanted to startwith that.
However, I do think there have also been some real problems, particularly in the last five years or so. Some of the problems that I’ve
seen in investigative journalism in Japan are unique to Japan and are
a reflection of structural problems or issues in the country. Other
problems are universal problems that all journalists—all of us—share,
and that certainly are not unique to Japan.
Beginning in 2012. Japan had a kind of renaissance of investigative
journalism after Fukushima, starting about four to six months after
the accident. But when the Abe government took power in December
2012, I think we started to see that ending, with Japanese investigative
journalism going into a bit of an “ice age,” so to speak. But recently
we’re starting to see some moves back in the right direction. I’ll talk alittle bit more about that later.
But first, I’ll talk about the strengths of Japanese investigative
journalism, at least that I’ve seen in the big newspapers, which
are mainly what I look at. When I was working here as a journalist,
I read five newspapers every day: the Sankei, Tokyo Shimbun, Yomiuri
Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, and Mainichi Shimbun. I’ve cut that downa bit now because I have to pay for them myself, but this was backwhen the company would cover the tab. I looked at the various pages
they put out every day, what they were writing, and what they werereporting on.

I think one of the very admirable qualities in Japanese journalism istenacity. Once they seize on something, they don’t let it go. My favorite example of this is the series that my friend Yorimitsu-san oversaw:
The Prometheus Trap. It was published every day in the newspaper.
Every day! It was a series like you couldn’t do in American journalism.
The New York Times could not have an investigative series that appeared every day in the paper for like five years. And that’s what thisPrometheus Trap series was. It has been compiled into eight or ninebook volumes at this point. Just the various columns and the kind of
depth and texture that it allows reporters to do is quite extraordinary.
Another strength, I think, is the thoroughness. You know, I’ve had
the pleasure and the privilege of being able to help with Waseda
Chronicle here at Waseda University. And when I’ve watched how
they report things, there’s a thoroughness; they get all the documents,
they cover all the bases, and they don’t make leaps of judgment.
There’s a real sort of nose to the ground, “let’s figure out what’s goingon” kind of thing. Which I think is a real asset to Japanese investigative journalism.
There’s a history here that has taught Japanese journalists over
and over again the importance of investigative journalism. The biggest lesson from history, of course, was the failure of journalists to oppose World War II and the decision to go to war against a far stronger
enemy with no plan for winning. After the war, there was a lot of reflection, a lot of people coming back and saying: “How could we havedone that better?” I think for generations of Asahi journalists andMainichi journalists, for example, you saw that: “How can we avoid
that mistake again?” You saw it during the 1970s, with the coverageof Minamata disease, which Kumada-san mentioned. You saw it withthe rise of Tanaka Kakuei, a new style of “machine politics” and investigative journalism to expose those problems. And belatedly, you
saw it after Fukushima. It took a little while, but it came, and one of
the results was, as I mentioned before, some really good investigative
journalism about the aftermath of that disaster.
What are some of the problems? I think there are structural

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weaknesses that are unique to Japan. One, I believe, is the excessiveemphasis on access journalism. Yorimitsu-san touched upon this:When he was younger, people saw the ability to get close to authority
figures and government leaders as being a measure of success for ajournalist. I think that’s still probably the norm; to be honest; I don’t
think that’s been replaced by investigative journalism. You talk to
people at all ranks of the papers, and they’ll still brag about how they
got so close to such-and-such a politician, or say, “My job was to know
this politician,” and “I was the only one he would invite to breakfast,”
and this kind of thing. You see that same pattern with the coverage of
Abe Shinzo, the current prime minister, and the way that the papers
try to get close to the administration. One of the consequences ofthat emphasis on access journalism is that it makes it very difficult
for a place like the Asahi to do investigative journalism, especially if
it’s challenging the narratives being put forward by the administration. And I think that’s one of the problems that the Asahi ’s special
investigative section ran into that eventually led to their being largely
gutted in 2014.
You end up getting a massive pushback within media organizations against investigative journalism for fear that it’s going to piss
off officials and that the reporters in the press clubs will lose theiraccess. One of the biggest problems I’ve seen as I’ve talked to investigative journalists in large Japanese newspapers is the fact that they
get so much internal resistance. The other reporters don’t like what
they’re doing and say, “You’re pissing off my sources,” “You’re making the government angry,” “You’re making my job harder,” this sortof thing.
Another structural weakness that I would cite is the lack of solidarity between media organizations. This was apparent in the 2014pressure on the Asahi Shimbun and its decision to retract several
stories and, as I said, to gut its special investigative section. I think
the biggest issue for the Asahi was internal pressure, that the journalists turned against the special investigative section. But it also
faced enormous external pressure from other media companies.

The Yomiuri, the Sankei, the Mainichi, Kyodo News—a lot of places
went after the Asahi and tried to steal readers. That kind of “divideand conquer” plays right into the hands of the government. It allows
them to single out and to humble or to stop news organizations thatare trying to do more investigative work.
The third structural weakness I’d point to is a lack of a professional
identity. Because of the way that the employment system is structured and the way that Japanese journalists are hired—they’re hired
into companies, and they make their entire careers within thesecompanies—you don’t have a shared professional identity acrossthe profession, across journalism. Instead, you have very stove-piped
identities that are focused on the company. Again, I’ll cite the Asahi
in 2014 as an example. When the newspaper felt under enormouspressure, the journalists inside the paper decided to turn against theinvestigative reporting section because they felt that their top priority was not to journalism as an ideal but rather to the company, to theorganization, to preserve their jobs.
One side effect of that has been that a lot of the top investigative
journalists have left the Asahi; they have given up. A couple of them
have come here to Waseda Chronicle, some have gone to Facta, andBuzzfeed got at least one Asahi journalist I know. A lot of the goodjournalists left and went to different places because they felt they
couldn’t do what they wanted at the Asahi. I’m just using the Asahi
as an example. It’s not just the Asahi. I think that Asahi is one of thebetter cases, actually.
Then, the universal problems—these will be familiar to people
in the United States. One is the decline of the industry. The digital
environment has hit Japanese readership and subscription numbers
hard, just as it has in the United States and other countries. This is acommon problem that we all face. What’s the business model? How
do we make money? This sort of pressure makes it harder to do investigative journalism, especially if you’re worried about losing readers
or worried about having enough money.
Two, I think there are new forms of pressure via social media.

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Governments can reach out via social media to attack journalists andto discredit them, such as the “fake news” phenomenon in the U.S.
shows. This phenomenon has happened here in Japan, too, via theso-called “net rightwing,” and the current administration’s ability to
use the “net rightwing” to go after critical journalists and opponents.
The third problem is the increase of state powers such as Japan’s
state secrets law, the surveillance law, and the conspiracy law. The
power of the state to monitor journalists and to put pressure on themis only increasing.
Now, I still think the situation in Japan is a lot better than in the U.S.
I believe that during the Obama administration, the amount of surveillance on journalists and the pressure on journalists was far higher
than anything I’ve seen in Japan. And under Trump administration,
we’re just off the chart in terms of media bashing. And so, Japan isrelatively benign, compared to what’s happened in the U.S. so far. But
nonetheless, as I mentioned, we’ve seen a real problem in Japan withpressure on newspapers, pressure on journalists, and frankly internal
weaknesses.
I think that the big problem in Japan isn’t so much pressure on
media as it is the independence of media. We saw that, for example,
in the Asahi ’s pullback from investigative journalism. We saw someof those weaknesses come out there. The paper didn’t have the stomach for a fight when it came under what in the U.S. would seem likerelatively low levels of pressure. The paper basically capitulated; itchose to main its access over its investigative journalism, and it wasalso very worried about its declining subscription numbers. It had anumber of reasons to panic, but the end result was that it pulled out
of investigative journalism.
At the same time, as I mentioned, there seems to be a recent turnthe other way in the last year or so. There have been some big scoops
about problems in the Abe administration. The Moritomo Gakuen
Scandal, which was broken by the Asahi Shimbun city news section in
Osaka; then, this Kake Gakuen issue, which was broken by part of the
Asahi Shimbun here in Tokyo. You’re seeing some scoops and somebetter examples coming out of investigative work, and I also get thesense that there’s a lot of unhappiness among Japanese journalists
with the current situation. You know: “Can’t we do better? We needto change things.”
Finally, I think what’s happened in the U.S. with The New YorkTimes and The Washington Post both seeing significant increases inreadership as a result of not capitulating to pressure from the Trumpadministration has been a bit of a positive example. Maybe places
like the Asahi can say, “Hey, wait for a second, if we stand up and stickto our guns, maybe we can gain readers. Right? Maybe we can do thesame kind of thing.” So, I think there has been some spillover fromwhat’s happening in the U.S. into the attitudes of Japanese journalists.
Thank you.
Steven Butler
Thank you, Martin.
Martin Fackler
I have a quick question I’d like to put to first Kumada-san and thenYorimitsu-san. You both described interesting and vigorous investigative efforts. I’m wondering if there are also red lines in the sense ofa limit on issues where you would like to go, but for either internalorganizational reasons or external pressure, you feel it is difficult togo there.
YORIMITSU Taka’aki
I think we can cross the red line. I’ll share an example of somethingthat happened at Kochi Shimbun for two and a half years. I was investigating unlawful loans extended by the prefectural government.
I was the only one working on the story at the time, and I remember
when the editor brought the draft to the head of the department. The
newspaper worried about the article’s impact and whether it mightmean the end of the paper because we were going after a powerfulorganization.
They were thinking, “If this news comes out, things are going to
get ugly.” Now, investigative reporting has a lot of risks in general. As
I mentioned earlier, Kochi Shimbun had the largest market share, so

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the paper wasn’t particularly hoping that the article would increase
the readership. Rather, the risk was higher than the potential benefit
because advertisers might pull out. What was the advantage of thenewspaper? From a purely managerial point of view, there was noadvantage. It took half a year for the article to be published. There
were a lot of obstacles, and I tried to overcome them one by one, but
still, there were more obstacles to deal with.
In a way, I could understand what the editorial managers werethinking. They didn’t want to publish this article. If I had succumbedto the managers’ views, as Mr. Fackler was talking about, I think thearticle wouldn’t have been published. But I held my own. There weresenior staff writers who were adamant about releasing the article. As
a result, the article was carried in our paper. I think this is representative of the situation in Japan.
In Japan, you will not get killed for doing investigative journalism.
When this article was published, many readers showed great support. Advertising and readership didn’t decline either. There was no
negative impact. The readers supported us, and so, in the end, themanagement appreciated the outcome. We need to consider: Who isgoing to be targeted by our reporting? How can journalists place ourconfidence and trust in the readership?
Of course, in the past, journalists were in danger of being killed fortheir work. But that isn’t the case in Japan now. So I think the publication of articles that hold power to account depends on negotiation
with management.
KUMADA Yasunobu
You spoke about getting your article approved by your superiors.
The system is different at NHK. TV journalism involves various processes and so many layers of checking. After writing the story, you
are checked. The supervisor will review it, and the television control
production division will also check it. And there is an editor-in-chief
who also checks the story. Programs can’t be made by the writers
alone. There is a committee for NHK specials, and the program has
to pass through the committee. There are so many layers of checking.

The hurdles we have to clear are so numerous and high, which means
you often miss the best time to get the news out.
The most extended wait I ever experienced was six months. And
as I mentioned earlier, I wanted to use a particular expression, but
I wasn’t allowed to, so I had to resort to an ambiguous lead for introducing the program. So maybe what I produced became a little
different from my original intention. Sometimes tabloids write about
pressure coming from the NHK chairman or how he crushed our program ideas. It’s not like that. Of course, if the chairman said this-andthat, the tabloids would have a field day. But it’s not like that. There
are so many layers of checking, and so many layers of people expressing their concerns. If you decide to go through with it, you can do it.
I think that’s a good part of NHK. But sometimes it’s not the kind of
program you originally intended.
I put one more example of my personal experience. We aired theprogram addressing severe problems with the reconstruction budget
on a Sunday, and on the following Monday morning, there was a cabinet meeting. Immediately after the cabinet meeting, a bureaucrat
called me, saying, “Kuma-chan, this is serious!” I asked, “What is it?”Every Monday evening, the vice-ministers held a press conference,
and all agencies and ministries represented in the vice-ministerialpress conference criticized that NHK program, across the board. The
program was scheduled to be on air once again, but if things went
badly, it wouldn’t have the second broadcast. I was worried the story
was going to be a severe problem for us, but in the end, it wasn’t that
bad. However, for the next two weeks, we had to deal with the various
criticisms of our program. We had to publish ten articles refuting thecriticism. So, the actual movement stopped. We wanted to develop
further reports on the subject, but because of the criticism, we had tostop. That was the toughest part.
Martin Fackler
That’s very interesting, thank you. I have another question for
Yorimitsu-san. You have a rather unusual career path in the sensethat you came from Kochi to The Asahi Shimbun. I wonder if you

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could talk a little bit about how that impacted your work. The reason that I ask is that it’s quite common, particularly in the UnitedStates, for journalists to move from one newspaper or publication to
the next. And when they leave they, of course, are celebrated by theircolleagues, this sort of thing.
But it’s quite unusual in Japan, and I wonder if you think this practice could or should be increased here to develop high-quality journalism and investigative journalism.
YORIMITSU Taka’aki
Journalists who change jobs will usually be working as reporters
rather than editors if they transfer into national newspapers fromlocal newspapers. My gut feeling is that the number is increasing, although I don’t have any statistics to support it.
I think it is good to change employers. If you move to another organization, you can objectively compare and assess each one. My caseis rather unique. At the Kochi Shimbun, I served as the local news
desk editor for three years. Three years is usually the length you’ll
be in a given position, and at the time, I was invited to work for The
Asahi Shimbun. So, instead of returning to reporting from desk work,
I decided to join the Asahi Shimbun, and spend the rest of my career
there.
It was an excellent experience because there was a stark difference
between the local newspaper and the national newspaper. By joining
a national newspaper, I was able to look at the role of local newspapers objectively. And during my many years at a local newspaper,
I could objectively examine the role of national newspapers. I thinkjournalists spending their whole career at one organization is oneof the weaknesses but, at the same time, one of the strengths of theJapanese press.
When young journalists joined the company, I was always asking
them whether they wanted to be a company employee or journalist.
Such is Japanese company life. I consider being a company employee
and being a journalist two separate things. If you are going to live asa journalist, you probably have to develop your career by spendingtime in different organizations and different newspapers. I hope thiskind of trend is going to grow in the future.
Steven Butler
Thank you very much. Is there anyone who’d like to make any sort ofconcluding remarks? Martin?
Martin Fackler
I think the message that I’ve heard from Kumada-san and Yorimitsusan—Ishimaru-san is in a kind of a unique situation since it’s North
Korea—is that it is up to the journalists.
I think the issue in Japan is media independence, rather than pressure on the media. And so what we’re hearing is that if the journalists resolve to do good journalism, they can. And, if you compare it
to my own country, or if you compare it to many countries, it is arelatively benign environment. Getting scolded by the prime minister
is about the worst that happens, right? You can do good journalism
here; it just depends on whether the journalist can find the spine to
do it. Kumada-san used the word sontaku, which is a sort of preemptive self-censorship; it means trying to guess, in this case, where theprime minister’s displeasure may fall. I think this is the problem, thisself-censorship.
There are essential stories in Japan that frankly are not being covered, not by investigative reporting anyway. The biggest of which isthat this is one of the most significant transition periods in postwar
Japanese history. We’re now talking about the constitution being revised; the Japanese military is doing things it never did before, thestate is being empowered and strengthened in ways we haven’t seen
before. I’ve seen a lot of access journalism and spot news about it, I’ve
seen a lot of opinion about it, but I haven’t seen a lot of good investigative journalism telling me who or what forces are behind it. I’ve seen
very little investigative journalism looking at these massive, massivechanges in postwar Japan. It’s the same with nationalism, the Nipponkaigi (Japan Conference), and the rise of the right. Again, I see a lotof opinions, access journalism, and spot news, but I don’t see muchinvestigative report. For example, where does the money come from?

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Who funds these guys? With 2,000 journalists in The Asahi Shimbun,
they should be giving us some more answers.
I see some significant areas that just aren’t being touched at all.
But I do think that they could do it if they wanted to. I believe that itcomes down to what the journalists are willing to do. Are they readyto show that kind of backbone and that kind of resolve? So, I’d like tosay ganbare [give it your all]. We can all do better.
Steven Butler
You know, it’s certainly true. When I lived here, and around the world,
there’s no question about the capability of the Japanese journalists
who I meet. And I think it’s maybe a question of how you harness thatand encourage it. Thank you very much.
ISHIMARU Jiro
I’ll be brief in my final comments. I have been a journalist for over 25
years. I have been a freelance journalist for NHK and other for-profit
broadcasters, newspapers, and magazines. And now we have thereport from David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of
expression. He mentioned that there should be solidarity and professional identity among Japanese journalists. The lack of it was pointed
out as an issue. Looking back on the past 25 years, I have to admitthat the situation of the mainstream media is deteriorating.
We have here today two leading journalists from NHK and the
Asahi. The motivation of my friends from newspapers and TV broadcasters is declining year after year. As Mr. Fackler mentioned, journalists’ professional identity is also a problem. There’s a big discussion
about it, and in recent years the necessity to strengthen solidarity has
been recognized, but it hasn’t yet been achieved. On a global scale,the Japanese media, except NHK, is struggling to adapt to international conditions. Therefore, the resulting investigative reporting capacity is declining.
We have to hold on because otherwise, we will continue to beforced back. I am just one individual freelance journalist that belongs
to a small news organization, Asia Press International. So, in session
two, I genuinely hope we will address how we will be able to recoverand revive the mission of journalism, as well as how the freedom of
the press is going to be resuscitated. I think this is a topic we haveto discuss. I hope to learn a lot from the session’s talk. Thank youvery much.
Steven Butler
Thank you very much, everybody.

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New models to sustain investigative journalism in Asia

Kathleen Carroll
Good afternoon. My name is Kathleen Carroll, and I am privileged
to be associated with the Committee to Protect Journalists and theglobal mission of looking after the people who try to bring truth totheir readers and their audiences. I’m delighted to be here to moderate this panel of real rock stars in the world of investigative reportingin Asia. Our format for this session will be slightly different than thepanel one. I’m going to ask questions. They all have lots of good stories to tell, and so we’ll have a little more give-and-take throughout
this discussion.
To my immediate left is Yongjin Kim, editor-in-chief of Newstapa
from South Korea; and then Gemma Mendoza from Rappler in thePhilippines; Sherry Lee, editorial director of The Reporter in Taiwan;
and of course, Makoto Watanabe, editor-in-chief of Waseda Chronicle.
We’ve already seen so many good things from them.
So, let me ask the first question. We’ve heard a lot about cooperation here, and we just saw it in the film happening in the UnitedStates. There is a lot of opportunity in leveraging our staff when wepartner with other news organizations. It expands the footprint andpossibly the impact of the work, but it’s hard to find partners for cooperation. We don’t all automatically get along. So how do you findthe right partners? And how do you make sure that your news values
and their news values are the same, and establish the trust that willallow you to work well together? If I may, Sherry, could I ask you togo first on this?
Sherry Lee
Ok. Hi, everyone. I’m Sherry from Taiwan. Thanks for your time; it’s
my pleasure to be here. And thanks to Kathleen for her question.
It’s an exciting topic. Last year, at the end of December, we did asignificant investigative report with a partner. The partner is fromIndonesia: Tempo Magazine. Maybe I have to explain a little about
the topic. Last year I started an investigation in August, and I foundout about a fisherman’s death. His name was Supriyanto, and he wasfrom Middle Java in Indonesia.
This man died in 2015. The prosecutor said that his death was theresult of an illness, and the case was closed. But actually, we foundthree key clips, and we discovered that he was harshly beaten on farsea fishing boats, of course, Taiwanese fishing boats. I started to look
into this, and I found that it was just the tip of the iceberg. In Taiwan,
we have 20,000 migrant fishing industry workers. But most of themgo through a human trafficking channel and enslavement on far-sea
fishing boats. It’s not only Supriyanto’s case, it’s a massive case.
Of course, in the past, I would send a team to Jakarta and Middle
Java. And I did that. But when I participated in the GIJN conference
that Alessia just mentioned, I met a fantastic team. They are fromIndonesia. On the last day, I just walked over to them, and we talked. I
said, “I have some clues, and I am working on this case. Are you interested?” And he said he wasn’t familiar with this story. We exchanged
our emails, and when I got back to Taiwan, I emailed him the crew
clips, which triggered their interest. But the collaboration was notdone yet. So, I sent my team to Jakarta to their headquarters.
And I realized they are ten times bigger than our newsroom,

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Panel discussion 2
Panelists:
KIM Yongjin, Editor-in-chief of Newstapa (South Korea)
Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza, Journalist and head of research andstrategy at Rappler (Philippines)
Sherry Lee, Editorial managing director of The Reporter (Taiwan)
WATANABE Makoto, Editor-in-chief of Waseda Chronicle (Japan)
Moderator:
Kathleen Carroll, Vice-chair of Committee to Protect Journalists,
Associated Press

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because we only have 27 employees, and they have 130 reporters. My
team wrote trustworthy information, data, and statistics. After they
saw this information, they started to build the team. They assigned
three senior reporters, and in my team, we have four reporters. We
worked together, and that’s how we found the story, and we got thewhole picture.
Kathleen Carroll
Great, thank you very much. Yongjin, you have strong feelings about
the value of cooperation; would you like to take the topic next?
Kim Yongjin
We at Newstapa have some international collaboration experiencebut nearly none with Asian groups. I believe one of the reasons we arehere today is to discuss building a cooperation system for investigative journalism among us in Asia.
A few years ago, the editor of Taiwan’s CommonWealth proposed ajoint project to me. The proposed project was on problems surrounding the washing and dumping of industrial waste, littering, and migrant labor issues. It was a great idea, but unfortunately, we could not
put this idea into action. Newstapa also received help from our colleagues at Indonesia’s Tempo, to cover a story in Indonesia. The story
was related to oil companies’ shell companies using Indonesia as atax haven, and a very suspicious death related to these issues. The
editor of Tempo gave us help on this, but it was not a full-fledged collaboration project. But we have more experience joining joint projects in Europe or on a global scale, rather than in Asia.
Most recently, we covered the flow of black money involving
Russian money-laundering groups. It was a project initiated by
the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and The
Guardian and others joined it. The Samsung Group was involved inthis scheme, as well. Although some significant overseas media cited
Newstapa’s report, the South Korean media stayed silent. It’s usually
like this. These collaboration experiences provide us with some right
direction for seeking a cooperation model.

Kathleen Carroll
Great. Is there anybody else who wants to talk about finding partners
because, just speaking from my own experience, it’s difficult always
to make sure you’re all lined up. Great. Go ahead, Makoto.
Watanabe Makoto
I’m Makoto Watanabe from Waseda Chronicle. I think there are various occasions for finding partners, for example, meetings of this kindor holding seminars. But the problem is being able to find partners
capable of building a strong sense of trust because working on investigative reporting together means sharing your organization’s secret
information. I used to work for The Asahi Shimbun, but I didn’t partner with any journalists during my time there. I couldn’t place myconfidence or trust in them. It’s tough to know how to work with others outside your organization, country, or culture. The essence here
is to build trust between partners.
One way to do that is by going out for drinks. I’ve gone out drinking with Kim Yongjin twice. The first time was at an investigative
journalism conference in San Francisco. The second time was two
years ago when I was still working for the Asahi. I visited Newstapa,
Kim Yongjin’s organization, to get some ideas for how investigative
journalism in Japan could be improved. Our meeting ended early, so
we decided to go out for drinks, where we talked about various things.
I told Kim I was thinking about quitting the Asahi to do investigative
journalism, but that lack of funding was a problem. He encouraged
me just to do it and said that the money would come later. What hesaid had a significant impact on me, and I respect him a lot. That’s
just one example of relationship-building.
Recently, Mark Lee Hunter, one of the founders of GIJN, came to
Japan to give Waseda Chronicle and other members of the Japanese
media training on investigative journalism. What he said that I foundcritical was that nothing moves forward unless you identify a particular topic. But it is difficult to share such confidential information with others. And so, we all signed a confidentiality agreement
before Mark’s session started. And then we broke into small groups

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to discuss specific story items, including issues we had at the time.
What was meaningful in this kind of session was the position andmethods the journalists took in approaching the subjects of their investigations. That’s an excellent way to decide whether or not you
feel you can trust someone as an investigative partner.
It’s difficult to develop trust without creating an opportunity toshare these kinds of concrete plans and ideas. If you can do this, you
don’t even need to go out for drinks; you might be able to find partners then and there. I’m in contact with some journalists I spoke withat that session about story ideas we liked. It’s essential to create opportunities to understand how potential investigative partners approach their work.
Kathleen Carroll
Let’s move on to a different part of the cooperation. However, youhave found your partners, over drinks, or at a conference, investigative reporting can be dangerous, and there are safety issues. How do
you deal with the safety issues, both in the reporting and after publication? In some cases, your story is not a popular topic for someof the people that you’ve covered. So, you have safety issues in thereporting, and then safety issues related to an unhappy response to
your work. How do you work through that? Gemma, do you want totake that first?
Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza
First, we tell our reporters, “No story is worth your life.” That’s something we try to impart. We ask them to be careful. At the same time,
there are issues of online safety and surveillance. We tell them to bevery careful about their gadgets and the way they communicate online. We try as much as possible to prepare them for contingencies.
Of course, we don’t know what to expect, but those things are still
every day.
Kathleen Carroll
And those of you who have worked with other partners, how do you
make sure they are protecting the shared work through the samekind of technology and training and guidance that you might sharewith your staff ? How do you work through those issues?
Sherry Lee
Ok, I will answer the safety issues first. The collaboration with Tempo
Magazine was about a far-sea fishery and slavery at sea. It is quite acomplicated topic.
At first, I thought safety wasn’t a problem. But when I contacted
the scientific observer on the boat, they told me, “You are putting
yourself in jeopardy. It’s very complicated. You will touch on a lot of
stakeholders’ interests.” I don’t know why, but we just went for it. I
think gender may be an issue. The female reporters don’t think about
what kind of interests we will touch.
But after the story comes out, we got some phone calls from local
people. They said, “You have damaged our interests.” As a broker,
they take a lot of money from the fishermen. The broker said that thehuman agents say that I can’t be allowed to live because I publisheda story and damaged their industry. We got this kind of threats andphone calls from them. My colleagues started to buy some stuff forus. She bought pepper spray for each of us. We carry that every day,even now. But actually, I haven’t used it. But we haven’t visited certain
cities since then, because our faces would be recognized. So, it’s alittle dangerous. And about the issue, I think it’s essential to informyour team. Like what was said before, tell your team where you’regoing and whom you are meeting. And know who the stakeholders
are. That’s very important. And also, report everyone’s schedule in arecord database. Of course, I would give extra insurance to people
going to dangerous areas.
Oh, and I just mentioned gender is an issue. Even though I’m afeminist, I still feel sometimes that if you touch on a very controversial issue—like the fishing industry because boat owners don’t allow
women to come on the boats—I need a male journalist in my team,so it’s my photographer. That’s why women will have some limitations if we report on this kind of issue.
Kathleen Carroll
Who else has during your work encountered issues they’d like to talk

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about? There were some great ideas, but pepper spray can’t do anything. Ok, you want to keep going?
Sherry Lee
Ah, ok. I’ll talk about safety issues in Taiwan. We have less of this kindof problem because Taiwan is a society with law and order. But inIndonesia, it’s very corrupt. I think my partners there already know
how to protect themselves. That’s why we believe it’s a good chance
to collaborate with the local team because if we go there, we can dig
in very deep. Because they know society, and they have their contact
web. They know how to protect themselves. They can go deep andsteel themselves; they can defend themselves.
In my own experience, I was in Beijing in 2010 and 2012. And atthat time, I felt scared every day because my phone and house were
under monitoring. And even when I came back to Taiwan, when I
covered something related to China, my interviews were watched.
I think that it depends on the government, the situation, and the topics with which you are dealing. Just to add to that, in the past, we
felt safety considerations had to do more with stories that involved
local politicians, not necessarily national politicians. When we go tocertain areas, we make sure we are in touch with our contacts, someeven in the security forces, and we also double-check with our local
contacts.
But there are different safety concerns and security concerns latelythat are not necessarily immediate threats or physical threats. We’ve
been experiencing more personal attacks. They happen mostly online, and they affect how we work. They affect our staff more froma psychological perspective, I would say. We have a full-time social
media team, and a number of them already have PTSD. They had togo through some sort of psychological counseling so that they canbetter handle the kind of language that we are getting from people
online.
Kathleen Carroll
So, after publication, there was such a strong response that everybody in your news organization was affected by that. The whole

institution is under attack, so the impact of the work is affected more.
Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza
Psychologically you feel it; there’s a lot of pressure. There are attacks
on the reputations of our leaders, and particularly of the reporters
who are covering particular personalities. Our reporter covering thepresident, for instance, is a favorite target. And there are quite a lot ofYouTube videos produced about her to attack her. So, our team may
not necessarily be unsafe in the physical sense. At some point, we
fear that they may justify undertaking physical threats rather thanphysical insecurity.
Kathleen Carroll
If I may, I have one more question about that. You have useful data
about your usage, and you have good data about social media, youhave some pretty exciting charts that show when the attacks started
and the frequency of similar language. To many people, it looks like it
might be an organized set of attacks. Do you have any thoughts aboutthat and what you might do about it? And then when you’re done, I’dappreciate hearing from someone else who might have some similar
experience.
Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza
To begin with, Rappler lives purely online, so one of the primarymethods of circulation is social media. We have no choice but to beon social media. And then what we have been doing in the past is totake what we have seen. In the past, people really would engage with
us: They would comment, they would give us suggestions. Sometimes
people would correct us, and they would edit our stories, which isfine. What’s been happening started around the time of the elections,when things heated up. The comments became nastier, and at first,
we thought that it would die down after the elections. That was in
May 2016.
But what happened was that it scaled up. The volume of abuseincreased. Sometime in August that year there was this famous blogger in the Philippines, she has five million followers, and she posted
this meme with the logos of all key news agencies in the Philippines,

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that since posting our logo, the volume of usage of that coined word
increased significantly over time, and it was incessant. There was another abuse; there were other abusive words we noticed, so we havebeen monitoring this.
We did notice that at times the abuse would wane, but when wecome out again with stories that people feel are critical of the administration or at least that don’t do what the administration says, we see
the volume rising again. So, those are some of the things that we’ve
observed.
Kathleen Carroll
Anybody else have any experience with this? Great.
Watanabe Makoto
Waseda Chronicle hasn’t come under any severe attacks yet. But inmy time at The Asahi Shimbun, I experienced getting exposed to suchattacks. One important thing to remember is that if we become too
sensitive to online discussion, including personal attacks, we lose
sight of the real world. Although it’s necessary to check online comments and social media to see how our articles are received, online
abuse can harm our reporting. If, for example, we see five or so messages in the comments section saying “go die,” of course, those messages will hurt our feelings. But we should remember that Japan has
a population of 120 million; of course, there will be some people whowrite comments like that. So, we have to make sure to separate thereal world from the virtual world.
If you see a gap between the evaluation of your work in the realworld and the reaction on the same in the online world, there’s apossibility that organized attacks could exist. That’s something weinvestigative journalists face. During elections, in particular, thesame phrases will be used frequently online. The pattern is the same.
Our staff includes a data engineer, so we are analyzing such trends.
We have to make decisions by examining both the real and virtualworlds; if we don’t, we’ll be drawn further into the virtual world, andthat would put us on the wrong course.

Kim Yongjin
A few years ago, when we investigated some opposition party politicians and published critical stories about them, some photos of thepoliticians kept coming up online. We merely pointed out some steps
by the problematic politicians, but their supporters didn’t take it very
well. And there wasn’t anything wrong with our reporting, and wewere justified in having published it. Some of our donating members
who supported those politicians stopped donating to us in protest. It
was a tough moment for us to lose membership. But we also received
a lot of support for our stories.
From this experience, we learned that, especially when we know
we are right, we have to stay focused and go forth no matter whatkind of opposition we face. And we had a very similar situation recently: During the presidential election, we also lost more than 2,000
in membership, but I don’t care.
And one more thing I would like to say is that there is no physicalthreat against Korean journalists nowadays in South Korea. However,there are many threats to journalists through lawsuits. Therefore,
Newstapa tries to be careful and detail-oriented with our stories, toprevent giving any reason for a trial. A story based on data obtained
through investigation might never get sued, and even if there is a
lawsuit, it is unlikely to lose the case. After Newstapa reported on
the National Intelligence Service’s spy fabrication case, the primary
producer and I got sued by the NIS agent in both a civil and criminal
lawsuit. We won the first trial in the civil litigation, and the prosecutors cleared us of suspicion in the criminal case, too. The NIS gave up
on appealing to the higher court.
And another thing: The threat of wire-tapping or hacking also exists for our newsroom. There were some suspicious attempts to access our reporters’ email accounts when we were covering the NIS’s
intervention in the presidential election. Sometimes we held important meetings involving sensitive information outside our newsroom.
And when we were working on the offshore leaks story 2013, we rented
a safe place out of the office for about two months. So, elevating the

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security level is one of the challenges we face now.
Kathleen Carroll
That’s great. You said something that sparks a question that wehaven’t discussed. I apologize in advance for that. Accuracy is so crucial for good investigative work. For all the reasons we understand, if
you’re going to do a big piece that challenges an institution, you betterbe sure everything is right. Each of you has your internal standards.
Could any of you talk about how you ensure when you’re working
with a partner that their work is not going to be short of your standards that you’re not going to be vulnerable because of something
one of your partners has done?
Kim Yongjin
I believe in a well-defined purpose and explicit agreement among thepartners. The goal is the essential thing in cross-border cooperation.
When we worked on the offshore tax haven story, everyone promised not to break the scoop. We aimed to warn the public around theworld of how tax evasion, stashing tax money, and the expansionof the underground economy was endangering the world economy,
as well as to warn political leaders and policy-makers around theworld of seeking a solution together. We agreed on the purpose of
the project, so we believed in the credibility of our partners. I thinkjournalists can work together to report on issues that share a senseof common concern.
Sherry Lee
I think it’s a very challenging issue. When we worked with Tempo, although they have an English version, a lot of the time they write inIndonesian. And my website is in Chinese, Mandarin-based. We haveto translate all of our languages into English. There are staff members for this. And second, because the issues in the fishery industry
are so complicated, we have to visualize them and turn them into
infographics to make sure we understand them because they involvea lot of departments like the fishery departments, the foreign affairs
departments, and the judicial departments.
We have to make sure we understand the differences in the system

between the two countries. We have to communicate in a way that’seasy to understand. You know, an easy way to explain how the system
works in my country and to figure out how the system works in theircountry. After this project, because we’d become excellent friends,
I said to the leaders in Tempo’s investigative team, Wahyu [Dhyatmika]
and Phillips, “How can you just trust me?” I just talked to them for 20
minutes, and then they were interested in collaboration. They said,“You looked trustworthy.” I thought, “Ok, thank you, but how do you
make sure that I’m trustworthy in the end?”
We set up a chat room. The name was “code reporter,” and the
Tempo team and our team used it to talk every day. We shared all
the information, and we translated it into English, so it took a lotof time, and we made a lot of effort. You show your sincerity, you indicate your enthusiasm, you confirm that you’re hardworking. And
also, we set up other tools on Facebook and email. These tools are
only for the top managers, like me, Wahyu, and Phillips. We share all
our decision-making processes, like what time I’m going to publish,
what kind of response I got from the government, and what kind ofactivities I am going to launch, even the marketing strategy. This way
will give your partner extra elements to promote on their Facebook
or social media.
This is the kind of trust we keep working on, so we can make surethat we have the same standards of verification and ethics. But it’s
not easy because we are a tiny group, we just launched in 2015, andwe are very young, but they have more than 30 years of history. How
can they only trust me? But because we stood with GIJN, which isa very influential network, and also with professional reporters’ advice and suggestions, we know each other. Also, you have to maintainthe relationship almost every day to make sure that you are on thesame page.
Kathleen Carroll
That’s quite a bit of work. I have questions for the group, and I’ll startwith you, Sherry, since they are based on things you said. Did the very
detailed sharing and the different ways that you had to break down

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your reporting for your partners change how you presented the end
story to your audience?
Sherry Lee
My partners are more experienced; they are ten years older thanme. When we talked about the far-sea fisheries, I asked what kindof storyline we were going to make for the issue. And Phillip told me:“Sherry, you have to trust me; it’s human trafficking.” We have to go
back to the International Labor Organization’s definition. What is
the meaning of human trafficking? So, we went back to the root, andwe said yes, it’s a human trafficking case.
Your partners stimulate your ideas, and we set a tone together. On
the other hand, because I have some experience making many news
documentaries, in the beginning, I started to think that I will present
this story in different mediums. Like, we have a one-minute trailer,
and I made infographics, and I also made a seven-minute mini-documentary. Also, I have about 35,000 words worth of articles. We put it
in different kinds of media, and I would like my partner to use them.
So, even in the mini-documentary, I use Indonesia’s language, so they
don’t have to do anything, just use it. I’m a right partner, I know.
It has an exciting impact because when you have so many different
mediums, you can collaborate with the TV headlines. We occupied
TV headlines in Taiwan; we filled the largest daily newspaper’s frontand second pages. I authorized all our content to them, but I write
for that, so I can make sure there’s nothing wrong with that. And I
also go to TV and radio to talk about the story. So, you prepare for everything. We just talked about the print and virtual world, right? But
actually, you can [do well in] the virtual world, mainly because we areonline media. But it’s vital to get more supporters and more readers.
You have to impact the real world. But, especially for politicians, they
never read online news, right? They think you are not influential. It isessential for us how TV could make a program about us and also howdaily newspapers could write about the story produced by us.
Kathleen Carroll
Who else has excellent ideas about expanding the impact of when

you break stories like that? Sherry has just described an awful lot ofwork. What else have the others of you done?
Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza
First, about the virtual and real worlds: One of the things that we do
is just because we recognize that there are differences between thevirtual world and the real world. We work with a lot of citizen journalists underground, and we do train them. And what happens there isthat we also teach them the values to which that we adhere. And incases when they do share coverage with us, they sign the same ethics
guidelines to which we also adhere.
In this way, they got ideas on what is coming, what kind of stories
we will tell, and what the stories are rooted in their communities. We
didn’t have the energy or the resources to cover their communities.
So, a big chunk of what we produce is coming from the communities themselves, although we do make an effort to provide training tothem on verification, etc.
The other thing is you talked about impact. How do you make surethat people read your stories? Well, our audience is online. Fifty million of our readers are online, mostly on Facebook. We make it a point
not just to recite stories on our side; we have a derivative type of content that’s specific to the media where our audience is. There’s content that’s for Twitter, for example. We try to tailor it to the medium.
There’s content on Facebook, so sometimes a story or an investigative report might have a derivative, small infographics, an album of
infographics on Facebook so that people will eventually be attracted
to the story. Because at the end of the day, what we want is for stories
to become read. We want to have an impact.
Watanabe Makoto
We discussed in detail how to share information as widely as possible
when we began Waseda Chronicle. We’re a rookie online media organization. More than in Taiwan, Japan’s politicians and individuals
in power don’t pay attention to online media. They only think about
how to control the mass media that are part of the press clubs, suchas large-scale newspapers and TV broadcasters. When we thought

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about how Waseda Chronicle can have an impact in this kind of environment, we felt it was essential to collaborate with major media organizations. So, even before we launched the Waseda Chronicle, we
explored potential partnerships with established media and newspapers. In addition to publishing on our website, we hope that newspapers and TV broadcasters will carry our stories.
At first, we weren’t sure how to start. “For our first story, should wechoose a theme that’s easy for other media organizations to pick up?
Should we not push the envelope too much at first?” But on the other
hand, I thought that if we didn’t tackle a taboo subject, our story
would have less impact. Although we faced the dilemma of not having partners if we dealt with a taboo subject, we wanted to declarethat no topic was taboo for our newsroom.
That’s the stance we eventually decided on. And, as expected, themajor media organizations did not follow up on it at all. [Publicbroadcaster] NHK shared the story a little, but that was it.
In other words, and although I’m sure it varies by country, collaboration with other media organizations also involves compromise. But
we still have to challenge taboos. We have to find a balance between
these two sides. That’s why I think it’s especially essential to collaborate with investigative journalism organizations in other countries,
such as through events like this one.
Our “Journalism for Sale” series examines pharmaceutical companies’ marketing strategies to sell their products, which is a perspective that I think will resonate with audiences abroad too. We believe
this is an excellent chance to make an impact through our reporting.
We don’t want to collaborate with major media organizations; wewant to remain true to our position of challenging taboos, and wehope that other independent media organizations will respect thatand want to partner with us too. Our reporting will only weaken if welose sight of our stance and mission. If that were the case, it would
have been better for me to stay with The Asahi Shimbun, so I always
remember to be careful of that.
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Kim Yongjin
We use Google Narrative to monitor real-time views of our site closely.
We share our published items. A Google Narrative screen occupies
the center of our newsroom. It also shows the current number of visitors on the donation page and the number of new members of theday. We also track which story people viewed before they went to the
donation page, so we can analyze what kind of news items are likely
to make viewers want to make donations to our newsroom. We pay
attention not only to the visitors to our website, but also visitors to
our YouTube channel, and even to our Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.
Sometimes we incorporate audience feedback for our reporting if we
see good ideas online.
And we also distribute news releases and sometimes hold press
conferences for significant projects. The more citations we get fromother publications, the more people are impacted. During the offshore tax haven project, we held more than five press conferences
and released more than 20 news statements. Sometimes more than
100 reporters would attend our press conferences. When we exposedat our press conference that former dictator Chun Doo-hwan’s son
Chun Jae-kook had a third of a share company and a secret accountabroad, all the major press reported the story on their front pages
and all the leading news program in headlines. Hundreds of media
outlets cited us on it. And how many times our stories are cited inother publications is a good indicator of our impact and our stories’
viewership.
Kathleen Carroll
Some great ideas are coming from all of you. It’s also true that you’re
all young news organizations, part of a kind of journalistic insurgence at a time when big media companies may be wrestling with allof this. Does that mean you think it would be harder to partner with amore traditional, more established, older news organization? Do you
feel like you are better partnered with people who are similar to you,even if they’re in a different part of the world?
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Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza
Well, we are on the lookout for partnerships. We don’t have as manycollaborative projects yet with other news organizations outside of
the Philippines, but what we have been trying to do with the otherlocal media organizations is to cover some of the issues, not necessarily sharing all of the information that we know. Still, we sharedwith them the data analysis that we have been doing on social media.
But the discussions were more along the lines of “We should be doing
more stories about this,” like the patriotic trolling, the propaganda
on social media, and joint efforts toward fact-checking. We have discussed those things.
It’s not quite there yet. There are a lot of things that need to befleshed out, and people tend to be quite busy, but at least what has
been happening is that there is some level of understanding among
local news organizations. In the past, it’s been different because it’sa very competitive industry. But there’s some level of understandingthat there’s a need for collaboration, which did not exist before. So
that’s something we’re noticing.
Sherry Lee
I think foreign media want to find a partner if they come to Taiwan.
They wouldn’t have found The Reporter 18 months ago. Like Yongjin
just mentioned, I was there before, I was there for 17 years, and I cut
my pay by half to come here to set up this non-profit organization.
But now we won a lot of news awards. After a prize, people start torecognize you.
Like last May 1, we did a tracker platform of examining the labor
policy of our president, President Tsai. And we teamed up with one
artist, two engineers, and three reporters to do a policy examination
for three months. It’s a very complicated issue, but we tracked theplatform. So, we put the whole labor policy into eight categories, like“promise kept,” and “promise broken,” or “stuck.” And the president
just shared our link and our website in the afternoon; we had published in the morning. And she shared it. She was the one to be examined, but she shared it. She said thanks to The Reporter for exploring

her policies, and she hoped that all the citizens could follow up onthese examinations.
So, I think the most important thing is not only money. If you do
the right thing, not do things right, if you do the right thing, if you
do serious journalism, if you do good journalism, money and brandawareness will follow. Like the story about forced labor on far-sea
fishing vessels, after that, we got around 400,000 new Taiwan dollars(about $13,000) within a week. It’s not a lot, but it’s faster, the donations come faster.
And after that, we were nominated for the SOPA, Society of
Publishers Award based in Hong Kong. It’s going to be announced
on June 15, 2017. We are nominated for this award for six items, andlast week we got 600,000 new Taiwan dollars (about $19,500) in donations. So, we think that serious journalism happens in Taiwan, andwe are promoting this movement.
Watanabe Makoto
I think we should willingly partner with traditional media. In Japan,
there is growing dissatisfaction with the established, traditional
media. When new media organizations like Waseda Chronicle
emerge, they’re often pitted against the established media. I thinkthat’s a total waste. We should be partnering with them more. I would
even partner with Kyodo News, which Waseda Chronicle criticizedin our “Journalism for Sale” series … though they might be mad at
us right now (laughs). I don’t want to be involved in battles between
media organizations.
Although we wrote about Kyodo News in our “Journalism for Sale”
series, it wasn’t our aim to attack them. We wanted to go after Dentsu
and pharmaceutical companies instead. Although we hoped that our
publication would prompt Kyodo News and the local papers that had
carried the compensated article, we reported on, to promise to stop
those wrong praxis. Instead, Kyodo News pushed back against ourreporting. So, there’s nothing for us to do but respond in turn. But
the ones who are happiest when media organizations fight are politicians and large corporations. They probably think to themselves that

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things are going well. That’s why we have to be self-aware and cooperate with, rather than confront, other media organizations.
Even if collaboration between Waseda Chronicle and The Asahi
Shimbun isn’t possible, we will welcome like-minded Asahi journalists who want to work with us. I don’t know how well that would
go over for them at the Asahi, though. We should be doing more ofthat kind of collaboration, and, in fact, in the six months, since welaunched Waseda Chronicle, many of my old friends and friends inestablished media organizations are secretly in contact with us.
Many of those friends think that the Japanese media is in trouble,
and they want to do something different. But they seem to be justhesitating to join Waseda Chronicle because of no salary there andworry about livelihood. So, as editor-in-chief, I want first to create asolid financial base so that the reporters who want to work with us
could choose easily to join us.
We are currently running a crowdfunding campaign, and weraised five million yen (about $45,100) to support our reporting. We
also have a membership system for readers to donate 1,000 yen permonth. We aim to raise membership to 10,000 in a few years. If wesucceed, we’ll be able to run our news organization with those funds.
We are online-only, so we don’t have high costs. We have donation
forms ready here today, and we hope to receive your support.
Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza
I’d just like to add something more regarding collaboration. I think
you might say that it’s kind of a collaboration that evolved as a matterof necessity in covering the war on drugs in the Philippines. Because
it’s so difficult to get facts and details about the people getting killed,there have been a lot of FOI requests in the past. I’m asking for a list of
those getting killed, but the police have not released that. What they
have been releasing are numbers, and then they have been attacking
me for interpreting arbitrary numbers that they released as the fullnumber.
They are saying that not all of those were related to drugs, but they
were not giving any breakdown. So, what the media organizations,at least the reporters covering this situation, have started doing iscollaborating. We usually don’t compare notes; it’s a competitive
industry, after all. But we have had this practice already among individual reporters comparing notes and seeing where the gaps intheir data are. Because organizations have been keeping lists, everybody has their list. We’ve been talking about how to collate the lists.
How do we make sense of the records so that we know for a fact how
many were affected? That conversation has started, and it looks likeit’s something that is welcomed by everybody so far. It’s kind of a response to expediency.
Kathleen Carroll
Well, force multipliers are always right. Each of you has said something particular about relationships with your audiences and yourengagement with them. It’s much more intimate than it is for journalists and news leaders who work in more traditional news organizations. I wonder if you could talk for a little bit about how that affects
your story choices, your planning for the next year, and what you’re
thinking about covering? Yongjin, you talked about losing some people who were unhappy with you, and politics will do that. Could you
talk about some that you may have gained because of the stories?
Those of us who spent most of our careers in traditional organizations listened to the discussion of real engagement with youraudiences with a fair amount of jealousy. And I wondered if you
could talk a little bit more about how you feed that back into yourdecision-making.
Kim Yongjin
The number one thing our audience cares most about is our stancetoward power. We’ve conducted online surveys twice a year to see
what our donating members expect from us. We’ve been doing thesesurveys for four years now. And every time, “holding those in power
accountable” has come out as the number one expectation from ourmembers.
We often ask them why they donate to us, and they have told us
the same thing: that we can hold those in power accountable. At the

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end of the year, we survey our donating members to pick out the beststories that have popped up over the year, and we then make a list of
the top 10 best stories. It’s a list that shows us what kind of work ourdonating members want from us. And you can also see the spikes inour membership that occur right after we expose something throughexcellent and exclusive investigative reporting. I think that good investigative journalism is the best engine for us to continue our work.
Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza
In our case, though it may be stressful now, the comments are also
inspirations for new stories; that’s something we have found. Whenpeople start asking specific follow-up questions, they give birth to
new stories that we pursue. As a result of this conversation with ouraudience, they give us a lot of tips on investigative reports to continue.
One example is when we released a series of stories on the Iglesia ni
Cristo, which is a major Christian denomination in the Philippines.
There were some scandals within it that we covered. While there
were attacks on us at the same time, the fact that we stayed withthe story meant that there were a lot of follow-ups, so there’s trust.
I guess we gained some trust from that quarter. They kept sending
leads. One thing that we found from a recent focus group discussion with some of our very dedicated followers was that they look for
those investigative pieces for the high-impact pieces that we do, andthey encourage us to do more.
Some people approached us since we don’t have a donation facility yet; we have a business model where we have advertising, we doevents, etc. But one thing that we have been thinking about in thatpast was whether to get into donations. And we’re worried about theadvertising budget because the trolls have been attacking our advertisers as well, and they’ve been getting jittery. But what we have seenis that the community, the ones who are most loyal, have been stepping up. And then they have been asking us how to help. So, I guess
it’s something.
Sherry Lee
In today’s panels, the keyword is collaboration. I want to bring out

a new keyword. Seventy percent of my readers are millennials. You
know millennials are so upset and angry about the current status of
the media. They think that we are feeding them with trash, with insignificant things. I think readers are tired of this nonsense. And what
do they care about? They care about justice issues; they care abouthuman conditions; they care about environmental issues. We do a
lot of diversification, renewal, and we do a lot about LGBT rights. In
Taiwan, we have 600,000 migrant workers, so we deal with a lot of
migrant workers’ issues.
Millennials want to make a change, and they want this unjust
world to become better. So, it’s odd that actually, The Reporter isagainst the wind. Because when we started, people said, “You are notgoing to survive for three years.” Of course, we have only been aroundfor almost two years, but I think we can survive. Our articles are solong. Our pieces are 3,000 words, and sometimes even 7,000 or 10,000
words. I think: “How can our readers absorb all these articles?” But
they do, and they share them a lot. Come on; they are not peeping
toms; they do not want to read these sensational stories. They wantto learn something with context, meaning, and significance. It’s another exciting thing that 60 percent of our readers are female. You
know, women are so passionate about justice issues; they are very
compassionate. I think it’s essential to be sincere, to be a reporter,and to do something good, and to do something right. The readers
are astute: They know if you are working hard or not.
Second, I think even when we talk about serious journalism, goodjournalism, our stories should be attractive. For example, we put out
an interactive news game. What’s a news game? The news game iscalled ER Life: Emergency Room Life. We make these interactive
news games to let our audience play the doctor as if they are in an ER.
Do you know how ridiculous the ERs are in Taiwan? A mother cancall the ambulance to take care of her child’s pimple. They handle
very trivial things. And we let you play this news game, so even themillennials, some of them do not care about public issues. But after
playing this news game, it will push them to think about something

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like the healthcare system, things that are happening in the world.
I think it is essential to be sincere and attractive, and also you haveto know your audience. Like every two months, we have a publicforum; we will talk to them face-to-face. We hold it in a coffee shop
and talk about some severe topics. But they will come, and it’s free.
So, we come face-to-face with them, we interact with them, and they
like this interaction.
Watanabe Makoto
My view is also similar to others’. Investigative journalism isn’t justfor the journalists themselves; it’s for everyone. Waseda Chronicle
also holds events with our donors. We don’t just hold lectures but
also the kind of editorial meetings that our staff members hold. We
call these brainstorming sessions, and in them, we share ideas andwrite out on a whiteboard what topics we are considering, how toinvestigate them, and how to report on and disseminate them. They
are interactive sessions. By holding these with donors, we can understand what topics interest them. We not only get statistics about
our donors but can deeply understand their thoughts on these topics.
That’s one way we involve readers.
I think many people think that investigative journalism is part ofthe broader field of journalism and that it’s something done by professionals. Of course, we have our pride as professionals, but it’s nogood to keep how we work a secret; we should be open to others. Our
newsroom is diverse: Naturally, it mainly consists of journalists, but
it also includes a doctor, someone who worked for a foreign government, a data engineer, and a designer. And the MC of today’s eventis the owner of a gay bar in Tokyo’s Ginza neighborhood. There’s noreason these people can’t do investigative journalism. They have aknack for it. If we share the same values and know-how, everyone
can have a journalistic spirit. These diverse members help move ourinvestigative journalism forward because they all bring their specialized knowledge. And our donors aren’t just readers but participantsin the organization. It’s essential to think of how we can involve them.
In addition to holding interactive events, crowdfunding is alsoessential. We run crowdfunding campaigns for specific topics that
we are investigating. Our first crowdfunding campaign wasn’t formoney to get the organization off the ground; it was to support further articles in the “Journalism for Sale” series. Although I wanted tostart the crowdfunding campaign when we began investigating this
topic, that would give away what we were doing, so we launched acrowdfunding campaign at the same time as we released the series’
first article. We plan to run a crowdfunding campaign for other investigations we do. We plan to use membership fees to cover operating
and personnel costs.
The great thing about crowdfunding is the messages that people
send along with their donations. Many send profound messages
about the topic we’re investigating; these messages both help ourinvestigation and encourage us. We raised five million yen (about$46,000) through the “Journalism for Sale” crowdfunding campaign.
By running similar campaigns for our other series, I think we cangauge readers’ responses and understand what they are looking for.
Kathleen Carroll
We have only a few minutes left, and I just want to say that this is
so inspiring and that you all are so inventive. Anybody listening tothis or who will have access to the substance of this panel can’t help
but be enthusiastic and inspired by what you’re doing. So, I’m goingto ask each of you if you could one or two short comments to tell
us what advice you have. What would be the most important single
piece of advice you would have for somebody who’s listening to you
and thinking of starting an investigative news organization like theones that you run. What would be the most important thing for themto do? (Besides find somebody rich to help them get started.)
Watanabe Makoto
In a word, you have to be determined. I think that’s it. Although there
might be plenty of things to complain about—such as “this and thatis wrong with my workplace” or “I’m not getting paid right now”—
if you are determined, you can win against even big organizations
because their employees don’t have the same resolve. Anyone who

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wishes to be in this job has to be determined.
Sherry Lee
I think my advice is to be resilient. When you do investigative journalism, sometimes it can be upsetting. So, it’s up and down. You have tobe resilient, and you have to work as a team. As reporters, we are very
egocentric. But in investigative journalism, especially in this complicated world, you have to work as a team. And third, work with young
talent. Millennials have a lot of potentials. They know how to attract
attention, and they know how to use different mediums to tell a story.
So, try to empower them, and try to work with them. Resilience, work
as a team, and try to empower millennials. Thank you.
Kim Yongjin
Instead of advice, if you would give me two or three minutes, I would
like to talk a little more about cooperation. I think we can think ofseveral different types of cooperation models. First, there is a model
where relationships with several countries are involved. I choose andinvite investigative reporting groups from each country as partners
to cover issues linked to their own countries and then share the result of the investigation to see the whole picture. It requires sharing
and collaborating rather than competing. Most of all, you need tohave the courage to give up the scoop and show that it is inclusive
information.
Secondly, and like the former model, you get the data first, andthen you start to do the project. And you agree on common issues
that need to get reported. You can collaborate by individually investigating the current situation in your own country on the subject, thenshare the result among yourselves. I mentioned earlier, and Sherry
told us as well about topics such as maritime migrant workers, air
pollution, and international prostitution. These issues involve international laws and rules, so important questions that go beyond national borders could be tactics for a collaborative project. If we want
to go further than this level, we need to talk more. So, we need tobuild this kind of model for cooperation. Thank you.

Kathleen Carroll
Great. To sum up, it is quite inspiring to spend time with these fourjournalists and hear about their news organizations. What we canleave with is that if you are creative and determined, and you value
young talent, and you value play, and you invest in your community.
Still, you also think globally, and most importantly, if you’re willing toshare, if you take the competitive juices and put them aside on behalfof the audience, and hold tight to the values that we all cherish ofinvestigative reporting, and work hard on your accuracy. Then, you
can have a great news organization. And as Makoto says, it might all
start with just a couple of drinks at a bar. Thank you very much. Let’s
give them a big hand.

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Isn’t it a journalist’s duty to unite to protectpress freedom and provide support tothreatened colleagues?

Isn’t it a journalist’s duty to unite to protect press freedom
and provide support to threatened colleagues?

Thank you so much. That was a fascinating discussion. It’s been an exciting day; it’s been a long day. So I know that all of you who are here
are passionate about journalism and the future of journalism, and that’s
truly wonderful to see. There are some thank-yous in order, certainly
Professor Hanada and all of our friends here at Waseda University. It’s
been a pleasure to work with you putting today’s events together. I also
want to congratulate the Waseda Chronicle, what an inspiration thisnew and innovative media organization is for Japan, for the region, andmaybe for the world. So I wish you the best of luck in this new venture. It’s really exciting to see this at the outset. We did an event on
Friday at Sophia University in partnership with them. I want to thanka friend who’s not here with us today, but was instrumental in making
it happen, and that’s Professor Yasuhiro Ueki, who was wonderful inpartnering with us on that event. Some people who I’ve been spending the week with, who’ve helped pull a couple of days of really great
discussion together. I also want to thank Martin Fackler, who was on
the panel today. My colleague, Steve Butler, who is the Asia program
coordinator, who has been doing an incredible job, it’s been a complex
effort, and we’re off to Myanmar later in the week, so we have morework to do.
But it’s been exciting to work with Steve; our board members;
Kathleen, who just moderated this last panel; Sandy Rowe, the outgoing chair of CPJ who I’ve been working with over the last six years, it’s
been such a pleasure; and David Schlesinger, who’s also a member ofour board and is here with us today. So, you know, today’s discussion

has been wonderful. You know, and it’s also been wonderful to see theimpact that David Kaye’s report has had in Japan and the debate thatit has generated. Something else I’m really pleased about is to be backin Japan. I first came here with the Committee to Protect Journalism
nearly a decade ago, and it’s been a bit of a story, so let me tell you
about it.
We have a board member named Norman Pearlstine, and Norm wasa Nieman Fellow at Harvard University – this was a mid-career fellowship. This was a while ago; I think it was back in the late ’60s. One of hisclassmates was a Japanese journalist named Atsuko Chiba, and in the
1980s, Chiba was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she did something
courageous. At the time, frank discussions about the disease were taboo.
And what she did is she wrote a weekly column, chronicling her battlewith cancer. It was published every week in the Weekly Asahi Journal,
and it became really popular. In fact, it was really a sensation. And sadly,
she died in 1987. She was only 46 years old. And after Chiba’s death, there
was a small foundation established to honor her memory. Norm, who
had been close to Chiba, was made the president to this foundation.
And this foundation provided funding for Asian journalists to study in
the United States.
Norm had a passion and still does, for Asia because he was the bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal here in Tokyo, and he was the
managing editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal. So this foundation for
two decades had made grants to support Asian journalists to study in
the United States, but after two decades, it was sort of winding down.
So Norm used the last of the proceeds from this grant, from the Chiba
Foundation, to fund a CPJ mission to Japan. His idea was that he wanted
to promote a discussion about press freedom. And so I think it was 2010
we came to Tokyo, we did an event at the Foreign Correspondents’ Clubof Japan. We released our annual report called Attacks on the Press. We
tried to have a similar discussion to the one you’ve seen over the last few
days over the state of press freedom.
And then following that visit, we did a whole series of articles, alerts,
and blogs, describing the challenges to press freedom and the safety

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Isn’t it a journalist’s duty to unite to protect press freedom
and provide support to threatened colleagues?

of Japanese journalists, and the problems, which are well-known to
the journalists in this room, are not insignificant. And here are someheadlines from around the world – a Japanese cameraman working
for Reuters was killed during protests in Thailand; Japanese journalists have been killed and arrested covering Burma; Japanese journalists
killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria; a Japanese journalist was kidnapped
and beheaded in Syria; even today, a Japanese journalist is being held
hostage in that country. Now, the challenges domestically are farless traumatic, but they’re also considerable, and here are some headlines: Journalist threatened; journalist buried under a pile of lawsuits;
journalist denied access to newsworthy events; journalist threatened bypunitive new laws.
We’ve covered all of this and more on the CPJ website. Now, you’ve
heard Professor Hanada and Martin Fackler talk today about the challenges that the Japanese media have faced in finding ways to defend
their rights; it’s been a challenge here. And the challenges are real, andthey’re also structural. But let me make one point. In most democratic
countries, and many that are not democratic, there is an organizationof journalists that works together to defend press freedom at home, andprovides support for their colleagues working overseas in dangerous
environments. Now, this is not the case in Japan, and in my view, that’s
been unfortunate. But I think today the stakes are even higher and letme explain why.
Across the world, press freedom is under attack. This is certainly truein my country, the United States, where our president has launched an
unprecedented verbal assault on the media. Journalists have stood their
ground, not perfectly or uniformly. But as Kathleen, our new chair, madeclear in the panel that she participated in at Sophia University on Friday,
there is a growing sense in the U. S. media that we are all in this together.
And let me make another point: this is not about journalists protecting
their own interests in a narrow sense. This is about the media as an
institution, standing up for democratic principles, and the right of thepeople to access the information they need to make informed decisions
and to hold the powerful to account. Now, as David Kaye noted, Japanis a democratic leader, and a leader of freedom of expression, not just in
Asia, but in the world.
Japan needs to maintain that position, and it can’t do it if press freedom, which is, after all, a fundamental pillar of democracy, is eroded.
And based on the reaction of the Japanese government to David Kaye’s
criticism, I don’t think journalists here can rely on the government
to preserve Japan’s leading position. We’ve come to a point, therefore,
where it’s up to journalists themselves to defend Japan’s global leadership. Now how journalists organize themselves, what you do to defend
your rights, that’s really up to you. But I do hope that Japanese journalists can find a way forward. Because let me make this point, again: thisis not about defending your own professional interests as journalists.
It’s about protecting the rights of the Japanese people to be informed,
and more broadly, it’s about defending Japan’s position in the global
democratic order by reaffirming the values that are at the heart of thatthreatened system.
Today, on the first panel that started this afternoon, and secondly
on this panel, we just heard so many inspiring stories about how journalism can make a difference in people’s lives by delivering justice andaccountability. So what’s at stake is our universal values. And that is
why we must all stand together to defend them. So, I hope you will
join me in thanking our hosts here at Waseda University, in particular
Professor Hanada, for this lively and engaging discussion. And I don’tknow if there’s somebody who follows me to wish you all the best. But
speaking on my own behalf and the behalf of the Committee to Protect
Journalists, this has been a wonderful experience, and I hope we cancontinue the conversation. Thank you.

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Overseas compatriots
over the native Masukomi
Reflections after the symposium
WATANABE Makoto

In the second session of the international symposium, Mr. KIM Yongjin
from South Korea’s Newstapa, Ms. Sherry Lee from Taiwan’s The
Reporter, Ms. Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza from the Philippines’ Rappler,and I from Waseda Chronicle participated in a panel discussion. The
moderator, Ms. Kathleen Carroll from the Associated Press, asked us thefollowing question: “Lateral collaboration and cooperation are incredibly important for the future of investigative journalism. However, it isincredibly difficult to actually find such partners. How do you find good
partners? How do you establish trust and work together?”
My answer was that “The important thing is to share the actual story
while proceeding with the investigation. Trust can be built by learning
about the other party’s research methods and stance.”
At the time, I was still unsure of who those partners might be. But
now I know. They are overseas investigative journalists, starting withthose in Asia—not the established media in Japan.

Overseas compatriots over the native Masukomi

Everyone was transfixed. They said the piece was “wonderful.” I realized that the best way for people to understand Waseda Chronicle was
not through introducing our history or members, but through our work.
I played the same video at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC) held in South Africa in November 2017. I had received the opportunity to speak at a session titled “Great Stories You’ve Never Heard
Of,” where I introduced “Journalism for Sale.”
Applause rang out as soon as the video ended. After the session, several journalists came over to talk to me. I discussed Dentsu Inc, which
operates around the world, with a journalist from India. It confirmed
my belief that journalists’ work has no borders.
Yet in Japan, no newspaper or television station would pick up“Journalism for Sale.” NHK and the Mainichi Shimbun did cover the issue
immediately after the release of the first article in the “Journalism forSale” series. However, both outlets only interviewed Kyodo News, thenewswire which had disseminated compensated articles. They did not
ask to interview Waseda Chronicle.
Kyodo News even commented to NHK and the Mainichi Shimbun that“there are severe factual misunderstandings; ‘Journalism for Sale’ skews
the facts.”
Waseda Chronicle disproved Kyodo News’ comment through subsequent “Journalism for Sale” articles. But to this day, neither NHK nor
the Mainichi Shimbun have interviewed Waseda Chronicle or produced
a follow-up report.

The work brings us closer
In the waiting room before the start of the symposium, I showed the
speakers a digest video of Waseda Chronicle’s series “Journalism forSale” with English subtitles. It described how funds originally frompharmaceutical companies had been used to pay a newswire called
Kyodo News to disseminate articles about the pharmaceutical companies’ drugs. The articles were then picked up and published in regional
newspapers around the country. Advertising giant Dentsu Inc had been
acting as the intermediary between the pharmaceutical companies andKyodo News.

Attempts to collaborate with the established media
In the beginning, Waseda Chronicle attempted to collaborate withnewspapers and television stations. Given our low name recognition at
the time, we would’ve been grateful for our work to be shared throughthe established media. We even considered carrying out joint investigations. A partnership with Waseda Chronicle would also have held merits for the established media, which rarely has the time to thoroughly
investigate a single issue.
However, this did not go well. The newspapers with which we were

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Overseas compatriots over the native Masukomi

attempting to establish partnerships distanced themselves after the
publication of “Journalism for Sale.” “Why bash a fellow media outlet?”That was the message we received.
We did not intend for our series to be seen as such. Our goal had been
to ensure that patients could receive the best possible medication. Afterall, it is patients who suffer if articles about the effects and side-effects
of drugs are influenced by pharmaceutical companies.
The response from our readers contrasted with that of the established media. They sent messages saying that “Kyodo News should bethoroughly investigated.” There was a deep-rooted distrust of the established media.
I asked the students who helped with Waseda Chronicle’s investigations, “Who do you think is most at fault: the pharmaceutical companies, Dentsu Inc, or Kyodo News and the regional papers?”
Surprisingly, most of them answered, “Kyodo News and the regional
papers.” I’d expected the majority of students to answer that it was thepharmaceutical companies or Dentsu Inc. The pharmaceutical companies use their massive financial resources to expand their businessthroughout the world. Dentsu Inc keeps an iron grip on all advertisements from its sponsors, thus maintaining an enormous influence overthe media. By comparison, Kyodo News and the regional newspapers
are minor players. I had thought of the pharmaceutical companies andDentsu Inc as “the instigators,” and Kyodo News and the local papers
are “the instigated.”
However, the students said, “The media are the ones closest to readers. If they had refused to publish these compensated articles, then theywould never have reached readers.”
The media organizations we had endeavored to partner with had
no intention of improving their industry; they merely distanced themselves. Readers were saying that such media outlets should be thoroughly investigated.
Are established media organizations subjects for investigation rather
than collaborators? Could I, having worked for a national newspaper
for many years, have unwittingly lost touch with the popular sentiment?

Masukomi, not journalism
Following our first series, “Journalism for Sale,” Waseda Chronicle
started publishing “Forced Sterilization.” Under Japan’s “eugenics law,”which existed from 1948 to 1996, over 16,000 individuals with disabilities
were made victims of forced sterilization. The law aimed to “preventthe birth of defective descendants.” It was created by politicians who
intended to “revive the Japanese race” following Japan’s defeat in WorldWar II.
Shocking facts came to light one after another as we proceeded withthis investigation. The central government had put pressure on municipalities to increase the number of sterilization surgeries, resulting in acompetition between prefectures. Hokkaido, which, with a total of 2,593
victims, had performed the greatest number of surgeries, had created
a commemorative publication to mark its thousandth operation. They
had taken pride in those numbers.
In Miyagi Prefecture, which came second with a total of 1,406 operations performed, the political and financial worlds had worked together to advocate for forced sterilization surgery through “The Miyagi
Prefectural association for the welfare of mentally challenged children.”
Surprisingly, the media had been among the organizations advocating for forced sterilization surgeries. A member of NHK’s management
committee had served as the vice president of “The Miyagi prefectural
association for the welfare of mentally challenged children,” and the director of its Sendai broadcasting station had served as an advisor. The
chairman of the Kahoku Shimpo, a major local paper, had also served as
an advisor to the association.
Furthermore, looking through the pages of other papers at the time,the vast majority had backed the policies of the association. The Yomiuri
Shimbun went so far as to declare that forced sterilization surgeries
would “utterly eliminate mentally handicapped children.”
How is this any different from how the media joined the government
and military in advocating aggression during the Second World War?
Had the press learned nothing from its past failures? In the end, they
were just another part of Japan’s systems of authority.

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Even more serious is the fact that the media has no intention of examining its complicit involvement in forced sterilization. NHK will noteven recognize the fact that a member of its management committee
and the director of its Sendai broadcasting station had been involved ina group advocating this policy. The Kahoku Shimpo continues to evadequestions from Waseda Chronicle, stating, “We maintain a stance of declining to respond.”
Dogpiling on targets of criticism when they show weakness, without ever intending to cleanse themselves—is this not the character ofJapan’s established media? They can hardly be called “journalistic organizations.” At Waseda Chronicle, we decided to use the term Masukomi
when referring to Japan’s established newspapers and television stations. It signifies their function as nothing more than an amplifier.

Overseas compatriots over the native Masukomi

Japanese newspaper companies and television stations do have overseas branches and special correspondents, local journalists have muchwider personal networks. The joint investigation with Newstapa andTempo made full use of this. We were able to delegate research and sharefindings, as well as introduce each other to research and interview subjects which might be inaccessible for first-timers.
The most significant benefit of our international symposium was not
simply sharing ideas about journalism. It was an opportunity for journalists to collaborate across borders.

The greatest benefit following the symposium
After the international symposium, KIM Yongjin, from the South Korean
Newstapa, stopped by Waseda Chronicle’s office. Despite the name, theoffice was only a cramped room with a rent of 60,000 yen. Waseda
Chronicle still had limited funding, and at the time all of its members
were unpaid. We couldn’t afford to rent a large room.
Upon entering the office, KIM Yongjin smiled and said, “We also
started in a cramped room.” Newstapa was founded by journalists who
had been demoted or dismissed from television stations for probing
into the LEE Myung-bak administration. In the beginning, they hadborrowed a conference room from a labor union and had had to leave
whenever the union held a meeting.
However, KIM Yongjin had not visited Waseda Chronicle’s office justto encourage us. He wanted to discuss a joint investigation.
Two months later, Waseda Chronicle and Newstapa signed a noteof partnership in Seoul. Of course, the main purpose of the trip was todiscuss our collaboration. As the subject of our investigation related toIndonesia, Tempo, an Indonesian news organization with ample experience in investigative journalism, joined the project.
International collaboration has significant advantages. Although

The Germany conference
Following the international symposium at Waseda University in June2017 and the GIJN ’s global conference held in South Africa in Novemberof that same year, we received a vital opportunity to deepen international collaboration in March 2018 in Germany. Investigative journalism organizations from 10 Asian countries gathered to form a groupcalled “Watchdog Asia.” Waseda Chronicle was a Japanese participant.
The conference was held in Germany because a German foundation had
provided funding for our activities.
Representatives from each organization stayed in the same hotel during the one-week conference. KIM Yongjin of Newstapa and Sherry Lee
of The Reporter, with whom I’d shared the stage for the panel discussion
during the symposium at Waseda University, participated too.
We voted to select three investigation topics, which had been collected before the event, and then formed groups for each of the issues
we were interested in. In the following days, we debated how we mightproceed with the investigations. We were together for every meal, andafter dinner, we would drink beer together. It may have been the richest,
most productive time I ever spent with a group.
I realized that the crux of our investigations and publications was
unexpectedly similar, including how to gather information and guarantee its credibility and how to defend against attacks from the targets of
our investigations. Our opinions mostly matched, in my eyes because
we each were involved in investigative journalism. We were all working

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in opposition to power and fully understood the difficulty of effectingchange and the risk of being attacked for the slightest errors.
Waseda Chronicle will continue to collaborate with overseas investigative journalism organizations. This isn’t merely because we haveconcluded that our country’s Masukomi is not the right partner. In an
age where governments and large corporations operate across national
borders, almost no topics are entirely contained within one country. To
confront power, journalists need to collaborate regardless of nationality.
We are working every day so that, by the time you hold this book inyour hands, we are sharing the fruits of our international collaboration.
Now, over a year after the symposium, our collaborative investigation with Newstapa and Tempo has produced Waseda Chronicle’s
fourth series, “Unabated Quest for Coal-fired Plants.” The story covers
how the governments and corporations of Japan and South Korea haveconstructed coal-fired power plants with insufficient anti-pollution
measures in Indonesia. The people of Indonesia are angry. Is there apossibility that the Japanese and South Korean organizations promoting the business have a corrupt relationship with the Indonesian politicians who permit it?
Our joint investigations will continue.

Looking back on the symposiumwith six points
Steven Butler

Good journalism is a nasty business. Good journalism uncovers truths
that may be good for most people but bad for a few, sometimes the powerful few. As I write this, investigative journalists in the United States
have exposed the alleged sexual misbehavior of movie mogul Harvey
Weinstein with a likely result that his career will be over. Police inLondon and New York are looking into his affairs. He’s been expelledfrom the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It’s hard to knowwhether to applaud or criticize the journalism involved. While exposing
wrongdoing of this magnitude is an achievement, the incidents that led
to this exposé had been accumulating for decades, with the knowledgeof many people. Why did it take so long? So, yes, good journalism canbe frustrating.
If there’s any message coming out of the one-day conference at
Waseda University that focused on investigative journalism, it’s this: obstacles to the practice vigorous investigative journalism in Japan andelsewhere in Asia are immense, but not insurmountable. And every
person who attended the meetings, on and off stage, would like to findways to promote more of it. So let’s peel back the list of topics discussed
at the Waseda forum that prevent and promote quality investigative
journalism.

Attitudes and social norms
In too many places around the world, journalists who expose wrongdoing are killed, imprisoned or otherwise attacked. That’s what keeps
my organization, the Committee to Protect Journalism, busy. Very
fortunately, Japan is not one of those places. Still, social and political
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attitudes don’t necessarily support vigorous investigative reporting.
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot belimited without being lost,” is how Thomas Jefferson put it at the startof the American republic, and that attitude, while often challenged, haslong underpinned the public and legal support for the American press,
even when journalism seems obnoxious or offensive. “I hate the press,”
U. S. Senator John McCain said recently, half in jest. “But the fact is that
we need you.” Those remarks, of course, came in response to President
Donald Trump’s labeling of the press as the “enemy of the people.” So it’sa struggle now in the U. S. in a way it wasn’t in the past. My point is thatin spite of obstacles, social and ideological support for the positive roleof a free press and vigorous reporting in society runs deep in the UnitedStates, deep enough to inspire confidence that the press will withstandsevere pressure from the Trump administration. That may be less truein Japan, as it faces off against the Abe administration, despite strong
and explicit guarantees in the Japanese constitution. Investigative journalists need to find a way to protect themselves legally, but they alsoneed to find strong constituents in society who appreciate and support
their work. They must demonstrate their value.

Looking back on the symposium with six points

operations in Taiwan, Korea, and the Philippines that show it’s possible
to embed investigative operations inside innovative online news operations that have a broader mandate. Of course, these are all relatively
new operations, and their staying power will surely be tested. Still, The
Reporter (Taiwan), Rappler (Philippines), and Newstapa (Korea) provide inspiration, hope, and possible models for Japan. The Waseda
Chronicle has started up a high-quality investigative program with few
resources available – on the hope that a revenue model will evolve on
the strength of its product. Surely, Japanese society and rich and diverse
enough to support this effort.

Financial support
Investigative journalism is expensive, mainly because it’s time-consuming for the volume of output. While it may attract readers, it’s hard to
pay the bills with it. Many newsrooms in the United States have halted
or trimmed investigate teams because of the cost. Fortunately, a robust
nonprofit sector has stepped in to significantly compensate for theloss among regular publications. Shrinking circulation among major
Japanese news outlets certainly affects their ability to support these
operations, but they are relatively healthy compared to many overseas
operations. Unfortunately, Japan lacks the nonprofit support for news
operations that might turn out politically or socially controversial products, and support from international donors may be almost impossible
to obtain, given the fact that Japan is a wealthy nation fully able to support investigative programs if there’s a will. We’ve heard from strong

Independence
Many nations, including Japan, have robust legal protections for freespeech. But freedom of the press is not the same as independence,
meaning that editors and reporters of news operations can pursue topics without letting fear of the potential reaction of funders, advertisers, business partners, politicians, or others in society affect coverage.
Nowhere is independence absolute; it’s a constant struggle no matter
what the nation. Still, the nature of Japanese society and business creates challenges, with political and business influence often wielded
quietly, behind the scenes. It created an uproar in February 2016, when
Japan’s Internal Affairs and Communications Minister TAKA’ICHI Sanae
noted that the government could order broadcasters to suspend operations should they air politically biased TV programming. Of course,that did not happen, but just the mention may be enough to inspirefear in license holders who manage huge, profitable businesses, and put
a damper on critical news coverage. This is especially problematic forJapan, where the broadcast regulator is not independent of the government. Privately, journalists tell of pressures from management to avoid
controversial topics. The Asahi Shimbun’s investigative reporting unit
was trimmed back after a huge public pressure campaign that emanated from the government. It needs to be added that independence isa serious issue in many nations that otherwise enjoy robust freedom ofspeech, including, for example, India. Japan is hardly unique.

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Institutional support
Investigative teams do not always sit well inside of other news organizations. They work differently. Deadlines are longer. Superficially, productivity appears to be low. They work off the news cycle. They can beplaces that beat journalists aspire to work in, or they can be centersof jealous competition. Regular beat Japanese journalists depend heavily on access to sources by joining press clubs associated with government ministries or industries. The investigative journalists can impede
their work should they delve into topics found to be too sensitive by
their normal sources, leading to the threat of loss of access. This issue
is especially acute in Japan because of the heavy reliance on accessjournalism, which is the lifeblood of daily news production. Therefore,
it’s difficult – though plainly not impossible – to locate vigorous investigative reporting units inside of large traditional media players, either
broadcast or print. Those large organizations ought to be the home forinvestigating units because they have the resources and the reach to the
public. Strong investigative reports ought to be a boon to circulation
during a time of declining readership. And it still could be, if news organizations provided the leadership and devoted the resources needed.
Talent poolThis is an area where Japan plainly excels. Look no further than thethree journalists who joined the panel at Waseda to talk about their experience of investigative journalism in Japan: Yorimitsu Taka’aki who
previously headed the investigative desk at the Asahi Shimbun; Kumada
Yasunobu of NHK; and Ishimaru Jiro at the Asia Press International,
which has provided unique coverage of North Korea. The early launch of
the Waseda Chronicle, whose articles on “Journalism for Sale” turned an
uncomfortable eye over the pharmaceutical industry, advertising, andthe news industry as well. Yorimitsu’s description of how he exposed
local corruption in Kochi before joining the Asahi in Tokyo shows inventiveness and skill in navigating the local political and business scene.
The challenge for Japan isn’t finding skilled journalists; it’s providing thebusiness structures capable of unleashing their talents.
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Collaboration
The vast trove of documents that make up the Panama Papers, andthe global character of the material, made it inevitable that journalists
from different publications would have to work together to report on
their findings. Collaboration is not the first instinct of most journalists.
But even in Japan, rival journalists from different news operations who
normally compete fiercely managed to collaborate. This has set a newmodel. These days, many stories of interest span borders. Our conference participants described some of the efforts to work with colleagues
from other countries. The high cost of reporting some stories along with
the need for local contacts and knowledge make this an imperative forthese kinds of stories. Indeed one of the positive direct impacts of the
Waseda conference has been to boost efforts among the participants
to worth together, including the signing of new memorandums of understanding. These kinds of collaborations provide an underpinning ofstrength for investigative journalism.
The news media is under pressure on many fronts these days. Changing
technology has undermined traditional business models. While someweb-based operations appear to be thriving, it’s too soon to say whatkind of business models can endure. No one has it completely figuredout. Many producers of journalism products have lost control of theirdistribution channels to Facebook or, in Japan, Yahoo! Japan. The demand for reliable information has never been greater. Still, at the sametime, media of all types are coming under new political and social pressures that make independent operations more difficult everywhere, andimpossible in many locations.
I would like to thank Professor Hanada Tatsuro for the amazing effort he has put in to make the Waseda conference a success. As director of the Institute for Journalism at Waseda, under whose auspices
the Waseda Chronicle operates, he is playing a major role in keeping
alive and promoting investigative journalism in Japan. I’m proud that
the Committee to Protect Journalists was able to play a supporting role
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in helping to make this conference possible. But the conference, andthis volume, stand as a tribute to Professor Hanada’s vision and energy.
It’s only with the leadership that he has provided that it’s possible toadvance the kind of watchdog journalism that we value so highly. Our
meeting showed that it’s not easy, but certainly possible. My best hopefor the outcome of this meeting is that it provides further energy to ourcolleagues in Japan, and elsewhere in the Asia region to continue theexcellent work they have started.

Acknowledgments
Editors and Contributors

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Acknowledgments

This web-based publication was a long process. The idea for this project originated from the international symposium on investigative journalism held in Tokyo, Japan, in June 2017 under the auspices of theInstitute for Journalism at Waseda University and the Committee to
Protect Journalists (CPJ). We published a book about the symposium inJapanese in October 2018. Now, we are happy to bring its products into
English for the international public.
We apologize to contributors for the significant delay in the publicationof this English version.
The editors owe debts of gratitude to many people who made theEnglish publication possible, in addition to all the contributors.
First, we are indebted to the Act Beyond Trust (abt), an independent
civil society fund based in Japan. The abt provided us with generous
grants that made it possible to cover the costs for English translationand typesetting. We appreciate especially abt’s founder and Executive
Director HOSHIKAWA Jun and program officer MINOBE Masamitsu for
their kind support.
TEZUKA Mafuyu, who lives in London, translated most of the essays
in Part I. We appreciate him for his excellent skills in translation into
English.
Another part of this publication comes from documents of the symposium. We would like to thanks the two simultaneous interpretersfrom Simul International, NAGAI Mariko and IKEUCHI Hisaro. There aremany other people to whom we have different sorts of debts, among
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them Sandi Aritza. We used the transcription of recorded original andEnglish interpretation as the base of the manuscript for the two panel
discussions in chapter 11 und 12.
KIMURA Hide’aki, Waseda Chronicle’s managing editor until April
2020, contributed through coordinating with the translator. We mustmention his contribution.
Annelise Giseburt, who is Waseda Chronicle’s English editor, translated one essay in this publication, as well as proofread the whole volume and edited as necessary. We appreciate her commitment.
Finally, we must mention UEDA Hiroshi of Uyushorin, who formatted
the layout and typesetting for this English version. We are truly thankfulthat he created a sophisticated and beautiful style for this publication.
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Editors and Contributors

Editors
HANADA Tatsuro is Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo as well as
Waseda University, a freelance social scientist and advisor of Waseda Chronicle.
He graduated from the Waseda University School of Political Science andEconomics. He studied at the University of Munich graduate school in WestGermany. After serving as a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Interfaculty
Initiative in Information Studies and then as dean of the graduate school, hetook the professor at the Waseda University Faculty of Education and Integrated
Arts and Sciences in 2006. Since 2007, he also served as director of the Institutefor Education in Journalism, and since 2015 as the director of the Institute for
Journalism, at Waseda University. Based on the institute, he established a journalism course for BA Minor. He retired as professor emeritus in 2018. His areasof specialty are sociology, media studies, and journalism studies. He published
two books on the theory of the public sphere, depending on the works of Jürgen
Habermas, Henri Lefebvre, and Amino Yoshihiko.
Hanada is the author of books in Japanese, The social space known as the
public sphere: public sphere, media and civil society (Bokutakusha, 1996) and
Politics of the media and the public sphere (University of Tokyo Press, 1999), andco-editor of Investigative journalism challenge: civil society and international
support strategy (Junposha, 2016). Tatsuro Hanada Collections in seven volumes commended publication in 2018.

in dealing with high-level radioactive waste by burying it underground;and “Nuclear power plant town,” a report on the struggles of a town hosting a nuclear power plant, torn between past economic benefits bequeathedby Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and damage incurred by the nuclear accident.
Watanabe’s investigative journalism has also uncovered collusion between
pharmaceutical corporations and doctors by analyzing data concerning funds
provided by the former to the latter. He has also pursued corruption issues
within Koyasan Shingon, one of Japanese Buddhism’s most prominent sects. In
addition to his work in investigative journalism, Watanabe has also publishedsuch works as “Between a man and a woman,” a series on the lives of people
with gender dysphoria.
As editor-in-chief, he has won the FCCJ Freedom of Press Award 2017 by theForeign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, and the grand prize in Japan’s inaugural
Journalism X Award 2020 by the Journalism Citizen Support Fund.
Contributors (in alphabetical order of surnames)

WATANABE Makoto has served as editor-in-chief of Waseda Chronicle since its
launch in 2017, following 16 years working as a reporter for the Asahi Shimbun.
He started working at Nippon Television Network Corporation after graduating from Waseda University’s School of Political Science and Economics in1998. In 2000, he began working at the Asahi Shimbun, engaging in investigative
journalism in the investigative reporting section. He published two stories aspart of “The Prometheus Trap,” a series that came out after the meltdown at
the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. These were “Aim for the depthsof the earth,” which sounded an alarm bell regarding the problems involved

Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza serves as a bridge between the editorial, technical and civic engagement units of Rappler, a pioneering social news network
based in the Philippines.
She leads Rappler’s data journalism efforts and played a key role in Rappler’s
real-time tallies and analysis of the May 2013 and 2016 election results. She isalso one of the key movers behind the development of the Agos Alert Map. This
pioneering tool that crowdsources reports of critical needs on the ground before, during, and after disasters. She currently supervises the development of#NotOnMyWatch. This anti-corruption platform that crowdsources positive
and negative feedback about government agencies, including reports of bribery.
Before joining Rappler, Gemma served as editor-in-chief of ABS-CBNNews.
com, the news website of ABS-CBN, one of the leading broadcast networks in
the Philippines.
She co-authored The Enemy Within, a book on military corruption and civilian neglect published by Newsbreak just before the team joined Maria Ressa toform Rappler in 2011. Gemma’s stories on governance & corruption, the security sector, disasters, and other social issues have won recognition in the Jaime
V. Ongpin Awards for Investigative Journalism, the UNICEF-Philippine Press
Institute Awards for Child-friendly Journalists, and the Asian Development
Bank Institute’s Developing Asia Journalism Awards.

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Steven Butler is Asia Program Coordinator at the Committee to Protect
Journalists (CPJ).
He has worked as a journalist throughout Asia, writing for the Financial
Times and The Christian Science Monitor from South Korea in the mid-1980s, before joining the Financial Times staff and reporting in Southeast Asia, London,
and Tokyo regular reporting visits to China. For a decade, Butler lived in Tokyo,
later joining US News & World Report, and returning to Washington, where heserved as a foreign editor at Knight Ridder’s Washington bureau during the US
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Before joining CPJ in 2016, Butler served as executive director at the Institute of Current World Affairs. He worked with institutefellows throughout the world, including in South and East Asia, and as senior
editor and writer at the online magazine OZY.com.
Butler holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University and has
lived and worked in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China.
Kathleen Carroll is board chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
since 2017. This global organization helps endangered journalists and advocates for press freedom.
From 2002 through 2016, she was executive editor and senior vice presidentof The Associated Press. She was responsible for coverage from journalists inmore than 100 countries, including groundbreaking news bureaus in North
Korea and Myanmar. Under her leadership, AP journalists won numerous
awards, including five Pulitzer Prizes — including the 2016 Pulitzer for PublicService — six George Polk Awards, and 15 Overseas Press Club Awards.
Carroll is a fierce advocate for a robust independent press and a frequent
speaker on the threats to journalistic access. She is a regular contest judge andconsultant on ethical and standards issues. From 2003 to 2012, she was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, the final year as co-chair.
Before taking the top job at the AP, Carroll led the Knight-Ridder Washington
bureau and worked for the AP in Washington, Los Angeles, and Dallas. She wasan editor at the International Herald Tribune and the San Jose Mercury News anda reporter at The Dallas Morning News in her hometown.
Alessia Cerantola is an investigative journalist at the Organized Crime andCorruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
She is the co-founder of the Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI) and amember of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). She
has been reporting from Japan since 2007, with a special focus on the aftermath272

of the March 2011 earthquake, the ensuing tsunami, and the Fukushima nuclear
disaster. She covered environmental and social issues, sex crimes, and corruption for the main Italian TVs and printed publications and for a cross-section ofmedia including The Atlantic, the Guardian, The Intercept, The Japan Times, andAl Jazeera. In 2016, Cerantola was part of the Pulitzer-Prize winning Panama
Papers investigation, working in particular as part of a historic collaboration
among Japanese media outlets. Since 2013 she has been a radio reporter contributing to the BBC World Service.
Her work has been honored with several journalism awards and nominations, including the Press Freedom Award 2012 by Reporters Without Borders
and UNESCO, Austria. In 2019 she was a fellow with Ground truth Project – Democracy Undone fellow, producing a podcast about Italy’s Identitarian movement. In 2013, she traveled the United States as a Transatlantic Media Fellow
with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) of Washington
DC. She has a master’s degree in Oriental studies, journalism, and corporate
finance.
Martin Fackler is a journalist and the former Tokyo bureau chief for The New
York Times.
He is currently Journalist-in-Residence and Research Fellow at the Rebuild
Japan Initiative Foundation, a Tokyo-based think tank. From 2009 to 2015, hecovered Japan and the Korean peninsula as Tokyo bureau chief for The New
York Times.
In 2012, Fackler was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for his and his colleagues’ investigative stories on the Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear meltdown. The prize committee said offered a “powerful exploration of serious mistakes concealed by authorities in Japan.” Fackler is also theauthor (in Japanese) of the bestseller Credibility Lost: The Crisis in JapaneseNewspaper Journalism after Fukushima, a critical look at Japanese media coverage of the 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster. He spent a decade in theTokyo bureau of The New York Times, where he also served as an economics
correspondent.
Before joining The New York Times in 2005, Fackler worked in Tokyo for The
Wall Street Journal, The Far Eastern Economic Review, The Associated Press andBloomberg News, and in Beijing and Shanghai for AP. He has Master’s degrees
in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana and in East Asian history
from the University of California, Berkeley.

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ISHIMARU Jiro is a journalist and a representative of the Asia Press International Osaka office.
His life work involves pursuing on-the-ground coverage of life in North
Korea. He has traveled to North Korea three times as a journalist and to theborder between North Korea and China roughly 100 times since 1993. He hasinterviewed nearly 1,000 North Koreans. Since 2002, he began activities to nurture journalists within North Korea.
Ishimaru is editor and publisher of the magazine Kitachōsen naibu kara notsūshin rimujingan (Imjin River: communication from within North Korea). Hisleading publications are Refugees from North Korea (Kodansha Publications)and Juena who came back to North Korea (NHK High Vision Special).
JUNG Sooyoung is a research specialist of Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation(MBC), Korea’s Public Service Broadcaster.
She graduated from Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in the Departmentof Journalism & Mass Communication. Jung then studied abroad in Japanfor about eight years and received 2007 a Ph.D. in Journalism from Sophia
University in Tokyo. Since then, she had researched as a Research Professor at
the SKKU and a Research Fellow of the Asia Center at Seoul National University.
Since 2019, she works for MBC’s Policy Cooperation Department. Her main
research areas are media policy, public service broadcasting, Journalism, andintercultural communication between Korea and Japan.
Jung is the author of The Social Responsibility and Accountability of Media(Seoul: Paradigm Book, 2018). She published many research papers in highquality Korean journals: ‘Can the disastrous results of media coverage on
Sewol Ferry disaster be restored?: A theoretical exploration for a paradigm
shift of journalism norms’ (Communication Theory, 2015), ‘Empathy, compassion, and affect: A public sentiment for the external extension of journalism
analysis and criticism’ (Communication Theory, 2015), ‘Making a civil war surrounding history in cyberspace: Focused on 5·18 discourses in Ilbe’ (Journal ofCommunication and Information Studies, 2015), and so on.
KIM Yongjin is the editor-in-chief of the Korea Center for Investigative Journalism (KCIJ), the first and only nonprofit investigative reporting organization
in South Korea. The center runs Newstapa, an online news website that presents watchdog journalism.
He started his career as a journalist in 1987 at Korean Broadcasting System(KBS), a public broadcasting corporation. He mostly covered criminal justice,274

human right, media, and international relations. He exposed that the national
spy agency had helped big corporations block people who had experience inlabor unions from getting work by doing illegal surveillance and establishinga vast blacklist. In 1992, he received the Journalist Association of Korea ( JAK)’s “Korea Journalist Award,” the most prestigious journalism award in Korea
for the exposure. He also has won three “This Year’s Broadcasting Journalist”
awards. In 2005, he founded and led an investigative reporting unit in KBS. The
unit had received about 30 prestigious national and international journalism
awards, including an IRE award during his tenure. In 2005 and 2006, he worked
as a visiting professional at IRE.
Kim quit KBS in 2013 because he felt the freedom of the press in Korea wasseverely oppressed. He then established KCIJ. He is the author of They know, but
we don’t, a best seller based on the cables of the US Embassy in Seoul that werefirst exposed by Wikileaks.
KUMADA Yasunobu is NHK Newsroom, deputy head of Current Affairs Division.
He started his career in 1990 as a reporter for NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai,
Japan Broadcasting Corporation) in Okinawa. In 1995, he joined the Current
Affairs Division and started an investigation into public funds use. This journalistic campaign revealed the misuse of public funds by government officials
entering into private industry and conducted a series of investigative reportson the abuse of political funds by members of the National Diet.
After the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, he transferred to Sendai to direct the coverage of the earthquake. By reporting on the budget for reconstruction after the quake, he highlighted the fact that the funds for restoration wereraised by increasing taxes on citizens. Still, government officials were using
them for purposes unrelated to the earthquake. This led the government todrastically reconsider the use of these funds, leaving no choice but to returnthem to the treasury. Currently, he works at the national news desk, bringing
local news to national attention using investigative journalism.
Kumada was awarded The Agency for Cultural Affairs (ACA) National Arts
Festival Award “Investigative report: Japan Highway Public Corporation (Nihon
Dorokoudan) Trajectory of expansion of Debt 30 trillion yen.”
Sherry Hsueh-li Lee is the editor-in-chief of The Reporter and the adjunct assistant professor of the Graduate Institute of Journalism at National Taiwan
University.
She has taken the current position after serving as an editorial managing
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THE EMERGING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MOVEMENT IN JAPAN AND ASIA

director since its launch. She was the deputy managing editor and chief producer of the media center of the CommonWealth media group. Lee had worked
there for more than 15 years before she joined the newly launched The Reporter.
Lee was a Sauvé Scholar of McGill University and a visiting scholar of the
Universities Service Centre for China Studies at the Chinese University of HongKong. She has won many prestigious awards in her career.
LIN I-hsuan is a Professor of the College of Sociology at Rikkyo University, Tokyo.
She completed her M.A. at the Graduate School of Journalism at National
Taiwan University, and then M.A. and Ph.D. at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo. Her main areas of research are ethnic media, alternative media, and journalism studies.
Lin is the author of Ethnicity and Media in Taiwan: Politics of Integration,
Acceptance, and Rejection (Rikkyo University Press, 2014), co-author of Investigative Journalism: the Rising Non-profit Investigative News Associations in Asia
(Sairyusha, 2018), Encyclopedia of the Journalism (Sanseido, 2014), co-authorof Work and Life Imbalance of TV Journalists (Publisher: Otsukishoten, 2013),
co-author of Did the Newspaper Report the Earthquake Correctly? (Waseda
University Press, 2012).
Joel Simon is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists(CPJ) since 2006.
He has led the organization through a period of expansion, helping to launch
the Global Campaign Against Impunity, establish a Journalist Assistance program, and spearhead CPJ’s defense of press freedom in the digital space throughthe creation of a dedicated Technology Program. Simon has participated in CPJ
missions around the world, from Argentina to Zimbabwe. Under his leadership,
CPJ has been honored with the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justiceand Human Rights and a News & Documentary Emmy for its work in defenseof press freedom, and numerous other awards.
He has written widely on press freedom issues for publications including
Slate, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, World Policy Journal,
Asahi Shimbun, and The Times of India. He is a regular columnist for Columbia
Journalism Review.
Prior to joining CPJ in 1997 as Americas program coordinator, Simon
worked for a decade as a freelance journalist in Latin America. He covered the
Guatemalan civil war, the Zapatista uprising in Southern Mexico, the debate
over the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the economic turmoil in
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Cuba following the collapse of the Soviet Union. A graduate of Amherst College
and Stanford University, he is the author of Endangered Mexico: An Environmenton the Edge (Sierra Club Books, 1997) and The New Censorship: Inside the Global
Battle for Media Freedom (Columbia University Press, 2015).
TANAKA Hiroshi is a doctoral candidate at Waseda University.
He worked as a reporter for the local newspaper in Ishikawa Prefecture,
Hokkoku Shimbun. After quitting the job, he went to graduate school at Waseda
University in 2013. He focuses on the history and political economy of journalism, social activism, and sociological theory. His Master’s thesis in 2015 is“Shimbun gensetsu no seisan to kouzou: Bunmeikaika to keikan-zai o butai
to shi te (The production and its structures of news discourses in Meiji-era
in focusing on enlightenment and sodomy law).” Tanaka is the author of thepaper of “Kukan no ryouyuu ni muketa shintaiteki jissen: Taisyou no jitsuzaika
to teikou no keiki toshiteno honyaku (Bodily acts toward the appropriation of
space: Translation as a realization of objects and a moment of resistance)” in
Shakaigaku hyoron (Japanese Sociological Review), 69(1), 2018.
YORIMITSU Taka’aki is a journalist and Suwa bureau chief at the Asahi Shimbun.
Prior to his current position, he served as chief of the societal news divisionat the Kochi Shimbun, a local newspaper in Kochi Prefecture. After moving to
the Asahi Shimbun, a national newspaper in 2008, he took the head of the investigative reporting section. During the time in this special division, he directed
the team for publishing the investigative series “The Prometheus Trap” after
the severe accident of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant in the Great
East Japan Earthquake of 2011. Then he served as a senior staff writer at the
Asahi Shimbun.
For his work pursuing fraudulent financing by the Kochi prefectural office, Yorimitsu was awarded the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors
Association Award 2001. For his team’s work on the investigative series “The
Prometheus Trap,” he was awarded Waseda University’s Ishibashi Tanzan
Memorial Journalism Award and the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors
Association Award in 2012. His publications include the co-authored work
Kuroi yōen: ken yami yūshi kyūmei no kiroku (Black heat haze: record of investigating the prefecture’s dark financing) (Kochi Shimbun Press, 2001).

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