Comments from Members of the Open Newspaper Committee (4)

Problem reflects disregard of English-language site

By Yasuhiko Tajima, Sophia University Professor

There must be a shared understanding as a whole company on how the Mainichi Newspapers has positioned the Mainichi Daily News (MDN) and for what purpose the company is making the English site. This should be called into question once again.

In fact, at first I did not know what was going on. I was then surprised to learn that the Mainichi had continued to carry such a controversial column without checking the contents and that most of the people in the company were not even reading the column.

It is hardly thinkable that the Mainichi Newspapers was even aware of the significance of releasing articles on Japan in English. Surely the company must have been aware of the importance of internationalization and globalization, but if they had been aware of the importance of these issues even slightly, someone should have spoken out.

It is true that the reporter who wrote the column bears responsibility, but there lacked a minimal system that is inherently necessary for editing. I wonder if the delayed response was also triggered by a nonchalant attitude that the site was not part of the Japanese parent newspaper, as well as by the vague identity of the MDN itself.

This is not to say that the MDN should be abandoned. It might seem that abolishing the MDN is the safest way under such circumstances. However, the Mainichi should take a longer-term perspective, and the MDN's high-quality, core activities should be continued. For that purpose, the structure should be improved so the MDN can be reborn, and these problems should be addressed in order to get it right in the future.

Considering that 60 to 70 percent of readers access the MDN from overseas, it is all the more important to think about the role of journalism in the international community and about how the MDN should convey the way Japan is viewed from the standpoint of the Mainichi Shimbun. It is true that formal news and hard stories alone cannot convey the whole picture of Japan, so there should also be other types of stories as well.

If the Mainichi addresses these issues in a convincing manner, without taking a cosmetic response, and presents how it is going to implement a system in order to produce a truly good site, the response should satisfy readers and a solution to the problem should appear.

The Mainichi should reflect on this issue sincerely in order to recover the confidence of readers, and put its utmost efforts into finding a way to overcome and remedy the situation. I expect the company to take this issue as an opportunity to once again question these fundamental issues.