Investigation of problems with English site (1)

Results of in-house investigation into WaiWai column

The Mainichi Newspapers has been conducting an in-house investigation into the problem of inappropriate articles being carried in the WaiWai section of the Mainichi Daily News website. The following are the results of this investigation, the analysis of the results conducted by a special task force, and comments from members of the Open Newspaper Committee of outside experts.

Breakdown in internal checks

The WaiWai column began in the print edition of the Mainichi Daily News (MDN) in October 1989. The aim of the column was to introduce not only hard news about Japan but also "softer" articles, quoting stories that appeared in domestic weekly and monthly magazines that presented interesting aspects of Japanese society and social behavior.

As part of the print edition of the MDN, the WaiWai column was established and was carried every Sunday over a full page and included six articles. The articles were written by MDN staff writers and three to five other English-speaking contributors. The choice of magazine from which to quote was made by these writers. One foreign writer who contributed articles recalls that the column was quite popular among foreign correspondents for giving a candid depiction of modern Japan.

The staff writer in charge of the column who last month was issued three months' disciplinary leave began working in the MDN Editorial Department in October 1996, after which he joined the team of WaiWai writers.

The publication of the print edition of the MDN was suspended at the end of March 2001, when Mainichi Newspapers Managing Director Yoshiyuki Watanabe was serving as general manager of the Multimedia Division (now the Digital Media Division). From the following month, the content of the newspaper was made available only on the MDN website. The WaiWai column was maintained in keeping with the editorial policy of the then managing editor (now deceased) of preserving the print content even following the shift to the Web.

At the time the print edition was suspended, the MDN had a staff of 15 foreign and three Japanese staff writers. Following the shift online, the staff was downsized to five foreign and three Japanese staff writers, with the Japanese staff subsequently being reduced to two. The task of writing articles for the WaiWai column essentially fell into the hands of just one editor.

The column editor generally wrote one WaiWai story of around 600 words a day while also translating other news stories for the MDN Web site. He was also given responsibility for choosing the source magazines. Later, an outside writer who had contributed to the column during its print incarnation joined the WaiWai staff, contributing one article per week while the editor wrote seven a week. It was during this period that many inappropriate articles about Japan's sexual behavior mores were carried online.

The column editor is bilingual. His colleagues had high esteem for his translation skills, demonstrated by the fact that he handled a full range of both hard and soft news. In April 2005, he was named MDN chief editor, working under the newspaper's managing editor. While the post of "chief editor" was not an official one in the corporate hierarchy, he effectively supervised all operations of the MDN. His business card identified him as being the "MDN Chief Editor."

Director and Digital Media Division Executive Supervisor Atsushi Hasegawa, who at the time was general manager of the Digital Media Division, comments that the title was conferred to offer an incentive to the foreign staff. "He was very outgoing and highly motivated, and he did the best work of anyone in the office." At the same time, there were some who voiced concern about the editor's predilection for sexual topics.

Attracting greater interest in the MDN was always on the mind of the column editor. He says that he came to Japan because of the poor job situation back home, noting that he had a fear of losing his job and that he did not want to give anyone an excuse to shut the MDN down. There was a positive viewer reaction when sexual topics were taken up, he adds, and this was why such stories continued to be selected.

Readers of the print edition of the MDN were residents of Japan and were relatively familiar with the kind of magazines that served as sources for the WaiWai stories and the position that the Mainichi Shimbun enjoyed in the country. But when the MDN shifted to the Web, 60 to 70 percent of those accessing the site lived overseas, notably in North America. Despite the change in readership, no special effort was made to revise the writing style.

The column editor assumed that different standards for accuracy applied to news stories and those carried in the WaiWai column. For this reason, both the print and web versions carried the following disclaimer: "WaiWai stories are transcriptions of articles that originally appeared in Japanese language publications. The Mainichi Daily News cannot be held responsible for the content of the original articles, nor does it guarantee their accuracy. Views expressed in the WaiWai column are not necessarily those held by the Mainichi Daily News or the Mainichi Newspapers Co." He did concede this might have been inadequate, though, considering that web readers did not necessarily differentiate between news articles translated from the Mainichi Shimbun and the stories in the WaiWai column.

Moreover, his knowledge and understanding of copyright laws were insufficient. When he first began writing WaiWai stories, he was told by a senior native English-speaking colleague that quoting from Japanese magazine articles was acceptable inasmuch as it was not straight translation but augmented with commentary and explanations. He took this advice at face value without further inquiry and continued to produce large volumes of magazine article translations. There were cases where personal interpretations that were not in the original article crept into the WaiWai story as a means of attracting reader attention.