Clarifying the concept of “harm caused by media reporting” Tsukasa Kuwabara Professor at Kagoshima University
1. Starting off from a “vague pain”
In August 1981, when I was a sixth grader, two classmates of mine forcedly pulled down my swimming shorts while I was swimming, pulling them off, and leaving me stark naked.
In July 2001 when I was suffering from diarrhea, someone suddenly opened the cubicle door while I was doing my business at a unisex public restroom (Japanese style) within a Japan Rail train station, exposing my derriere to the public. The person who had mistakenly opened the door was a lady aged around 70.
They are both incidents I experienced in the past that have left me with “emotional scars” that cannot be erased. I have in the past attempted to verbalize and externalize these two incidents (http://jairo.nii.ac.jp/0016/00002370, http://jairo.nii.ac.jp/0016/00004811). However, I thought that there might be a high possibility that others might perceive these events to “not be a big deal” based on a “common sense”. That being said, one cannot properly face the abovementioned “emotional scars” if one does not somehow transform their experience into a medium known as languages and drive it outside of them. By doing so, such an experience is secured in the “world of reality out there” in a format that can be understood (or so one thinks) by an indefinite number of others. Furthermore, not performing such an act of securing one’s experience to the world of reality (in other words, defining) will not enable people to actively assert their emotional scars to others. Shameful events themselves are difficult to describe. However, recounting the details of emotional scars caused by such events is even more difficult. Despite such events are impossible to verbalize if feelings of shame are not pushed to the front, people are forced to choose language that conceals and tones down (or denies) such feelings of shame. Because of this, the details depicted tend to end up being vague. I have been carrying around such “vague pain” all this time.
One day, a person who had a similar vague feeling of pain consulted me.
This person explained that while he was bathing at a public bath house in Kagoshima City, a newspaper photographer suddenly entered the venue. The photographer bowed and immediately started snapping photos. The person recounting this tale was a man and this was perhaps why he felt that, “If this happened to a woman, it would be understandable to be concerned about this. But I felt embarrassed being concerned about such an event… (emphasis made by the author).” I felt that this person was selecting – or forcing out – his words while discerning how he himself appeared in my eyes (one’s own identity as it appears to the other person). Although I was experiencing tremendous difficulty when it came to defining my own experience, it was surprisingly easy to verbalize (define) what had happened to others, securing their experience to the real world out there in a form that is understandable (or so I think) to an indefinite number of other people (http://gyo.tc/IsiC, http://gyo.tc/Isii).
Based on my own perspective, a person who suffers from an emotional scar described above, the experience of the abovementioned man seems to be strongly entwined with two types of “obviousness”. The first type stipulates “men are beings who do not (should not) feel a sense of sexual embarrassment” (that being said, this is an obviousness that I also share, question about it, and am attempting to dissect it). The other type deals with “the freedom of reporting and news gathering by the mass media”. I am not such a dexterous person that can incorporate two things simultaneously. Therefore, even if one can verbalize well or define things concerning other people, I am hard pressed to say that people have skills that enable them to define well things pertaining to themselves (though, this may not be limited just to me).
Thus, I decided to divert my attention concerning this issue strongly to the latter type of obviousness that does not involve myself; in other words, the obviousness that is “the freedom of reporting and news gathering by the mass media”. I decided to actively engage in dissecting this obviousness. The consultation from the abovementioned person became an impetus for me to be strongly aware of the issue of the phenomenon known as “harm caused by media reporting” (also known as “trial by media”).
2. “Serving” and “a platter” After entering university, I have been professionally engaged in the research of Herbert Blumer's symbolic interactionism (Cf. http://id.nii.ac.jp/1066/00000183/) up to now. In 1971, Blumer published a paper titled “Social Problems as Collective Behavior” (http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/120001394128). Blumer made the following statement at the beginning of the paper:
“My thesis is that social problems are fundamentally products of a process of collective definition instead of existing independently as a set of objective and fixed social arrangements with an intrinsic makeup.” (translated, P41)
Blumer by no means wanted to say that objective social arrangements are of no concern whatsoever with the establishment of social problems (http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/40019193469). Instead, he stated that even if there were many people who were tormented by such “objective social arrangements”, such social arrangements/conditions would not become a social problem if those people did not consider such arrangements/conditions to be a social problem.
There are many “objective social arrangements” in Japan that have gone through the above process. For example, sexual harassment is the epitome of such arrangements. Before the events that involve “a type of social behavior that is performed by men toward women” and “have a high possibility that it causes emotional damage to women greater than discomfort as a general rule” were named as “sexual harassment” and constructed as social problems, they have been viewed as obviously a non-issue. Instead, it would not be an exaggeration to say that a “common sense” that dictated “women who viewed such events as problems were the problems” had prevailed. To begin with, even if one wanted to turn such events into an issue, there was no language to do so.
Yoshiko Miya, in the Forward of her book Sexual Harassment: The New Edition (Asahi Bunko, 1999) had described the circumstance of the period at the time (before the 1980s) in the following manner:
“Sexual harassment” has been described as an old, yet also a new problem. Although the term itself seems like something new, the phenomenon itself has existed from olden days (new paragraph/omission).
….The phenomena that exist around us would be seen as non-existent if there was no language to scoop up such phenomena. Thus, in order to pick up a phenomenon, a new language, or a “serving” of a concept will become necessary.
The term “sexual harassment” was indeed this new “serving”. In order to serve, a “platter” for presenting would be serving. However, the fact that “a platter” known as “the era”, as well as “a platter” known as “awareness of human rights” – in particular, the human rights of women – were prepared played a large role (new paragraph/omission).
Although the 1980s concentrated on the task of listening to female victims, the women who recounted their suffering feared being identified as an involved party more than anything. They were cautious of the interviewer and, even if one was able to meet with them, they did not show their true feelings easily. To begin with, the task of verbalizing the experience they went through was fraught with difficulty. Often described as “second rape”, issues involving sex required the victim to prove to the people around her that she was 100% a victim. Back in the 1980s, there were many Japanese lawyers who, despite being a specialist in law, were completely ignorant about sexual harassment. Therefore, they had to start by obtaining western literatures and studying them.
After going through the “era of labor pains”, as Miya put it, described above, the 1990s saw the social establishment of “sexual harassment” as an object. Immediately after its establishment, various objects (that were social issues), such as academic harassment, power harassment, and alcohol harassment, became successively formed under the bracket of a superordinate category, “harassment”. The term “sexual harassment” not only established sexual harassment as a social issue, it also functioned to expedite turning other “buried” and objective social arrangements/condition as issues.
So what kinds of requirements need to be met for an objective social arrangement to earn the status of being a social problem? To be specific, how can it continue being a social problem? According to Blumer’s paper which I cited earlier, such objective social arrangements need to clear the five stages (hurdles) of the emergence of social problems, legitimation of social problems, mobilization of action, formation of an official plan of action, and implementation of an official plan. The one thing that is important in all of these five stages is for the social arrangement to “continue to be defined as a social issue”.
So what kinds of requirements need to be met for a certain objective social arrangement to continue to be defined as a social problem within a society?
*The cooperation of the mass media (for molding a “platter”): Blumer himself, albeit simply, has pointed out the importance of mass media in the aforementioned paper (translated, page 47). The impact of the four types of mass media (TV, newspaper, radio, and magazine), in particular the TV and the newspaper (pseudo-environment composition ability/agenda setting ability), remains large even in modern day Japan, in which the Internet extends to every crevice of society, while the number of its users continue to increase. No matter how much an objective social arrangement is defined as a problem online, it is nearly impossible for it to attain a status as a social problem without the backing from the TV or the newspaper (hereinafter, “mass media”). Even if a great number of sites that view a certain objective social arrangement as a problem pop up online, or rather, as its number increases more, the likelihood that multitudes of people will access each site will decrease inversely. Even if many people access each site, if each of these people falls in the state of pluralistic ignorance, such an objective social arrangement will at the very least not become a publicly known issue within the society concerned. This means to say that it will not be established as a social concern nor will it be obvious as a social problem.
*Language that contains an explicit definition (for “serving”): Even if one decides to define a certain objective social arrangement as a social issue and object to it, a “language” that is appropriate to represent this arrangement will be indispensable in most cases. It is even more favorable if this language has a signifier that spreads easily among people, as well as a signifier that has been defined explicitly. A language that possess a moniker that is easy to use when mentioning the said arrangement (ease in which an image can be conjured up from the moniker) and the clarity of the specifications of the concept will become powerful tools when turning a certain arrangement/condition into a social issue.
3. The difficulty
of “harm caused by media reporting” "Harm caused by media repoting, " now it may be called “Media Harassment.” The first time I saw the term “harm caused by media reporting” or “Media Harassment” within the mass media was in the paper of Minami Nihon Shinbum (http://373news.com/) that was reporting on the Okinawa rape incident by American soldiers that took place on June 29, 2001. This “serving” was a perfect tool for me, as I was attempting to dissect the obviousness of “the freedom of reporting and news gathering by the mass media”. Initially, the mass media reported on the perpetrator of this harmful media reporting as “a certain segment of the media”. They kept reporting as if they themselves (TV and newspaper) were outsiders. However, immediately after the (old) Human Rights Protection Act was submitted in 2002 to the Diet, the mass media were forced to report in a way that they themselves had been an active perpetrator in order to protect their own rights and interest. Therefore, the mass media was forced to frequently use the term “harm caused by media reporting” within their broadcasts and paper. This was a period in which an “object” of social problem known as “media scrum” was being formed. Ironically, the “serving” and the “platter” known as harm caused by media reporting was provided by the “perpetrator” – the mass media – simultaneously.
That being said, after the abovementioned (old) Human Rights Protection Act was abolished in October 2003, the term “harm caused by media reporting” disappeared rapidly, at least in the mass media. The term “harm caused by media reporting” (and “media scrum”) provided by the mass media lost its “platter” at the very least (however, the term “harm caused by media reporting” came to appear again accompanied by a “serving” and a “platter” during the formation process of the Basic Plan for Crime Victims spanning from February 2004 to December 2005).
Despite having lost the “platter”, the “serving” of “harm caused by media reporting” continues to remain alive in various media other than the mass media. However, since losing its “platter”, the term “harm caused by media reporting” cannot be said to be a commonly known social issue (that it does not have obviousness of being a social issue).
This is not the only issue. In reality, the “serving” of “harm caused by media reporting” itself was problematic. To put it simply, the definition of the concept was vague. In contrast, sexual harassment, which was discussed in the previous section of this paper, has a very detailed definition of its concept: it stipulates the action, the person related to the victim, the relationship the perpetrator has with the victim (or the relationship perceived by the victim), and the situation that constitutes sexual harassment. In contrast, “harm caused by media reporting” “ only has a very broad definition that states “a type of human rights violation where people who were reported on by the TV, newspapers, and magazines have their characters defamed or their privacy violated. It destroys their lives and isolates them from their neighbors and friends” (Kazuyuki Azusazawa, Harmful Media Reporting, Iwanami Shinsho, 2007, page 22).
Yoshiko Miya, in the previously-mentioned literature, states that her own mission is to “dig up phenomena that have been buried within a society and throw them to the society” (ibid, page 4).
Currently, there are many literatures and papers on the harm caused by media reporting (http://gyo.tc/IuUr). However, I have yet to come across literature that has been able to give a detailed and clear definition of such reporting. In the next paper onward, I would like to attempt specific tasks to clarify the definition of “harm caused by media reporting” (to be continued).
4. Bibliography I would like to gradually prepare and enhance this section.
*Organizations (those that traverse industries) that deal with human rights violations by media TV, radio: BPO (The Broadcasting Ethics & Program Improvement Organization) [http://www.bpo.gr.jp/] Magazines: Magazine Human Rights Box [http://www.j-magazine.or.jp/opinion_001.html] Newspaper: None
*Organizations handling harm caused by media reporting LAMVIC (Lawyers’ Network for “Media Victims” damaged by news coverage): [http://lamvic.j-all.com/] GoHoo (Watchdog for Accuracy in News-reporting) [http://gohoo.org/]
*Citizens’ groups that examine harm caused by media reporting The Liaison Committee on Human Rights and Mass Media Conduct [http://www.jca.apc.org/~jimporen/index.html] The Association of Reporting and Human Rights [http://kmplan.net/usr/jinken/index.htm] A Society for Researching Human Rights and Media Reporting (Sendai) [http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/40004395067] The Tokai Association that Examines Mass Media and Human Rights [http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/40004395068] The Association that Examines Mass Media in Kyoto [currently in recess] The Kitakawachi Association that Examines Broadcasting and Human Rights [http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA56717342] The Kansai Society for Human Rights and Media Reporting [http://www.geocities.jp/citizenandmedia/] Fukuoka Association that Discusses Reporting [Representative: Hirofumi Uchida (professor at the Department of Law, Kyushu University)
*Major researchers, activities, and involved parties Yoshiyuki Kouno [http://www2k.biglobe.ne.jp/~ndskohno/] Kenichi Asano [http://www1.doshisha.ac.jp/~kasano/] Masanori Yamaguchi [The Liaison Committee on Human Rights and Mass Media Conduct, Representative] Kazuyuki Azusawa [http://www.azusawa.jp/] Minami Ooka [http://www2.tky.3web.ne.jp/~norin/]
* Related literature [http://20110820a.blogspot.jp/2012/09/blog-]
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