"National Television News in Japan: A Production Study" by Elizabeth Naoko Matsuo MacLachlan

Elizabeth Naoko Matsuo MacLachlan

Deposited 2000

Abstract
This dissertation is an anthropological study of the production of national television news in Japan. It is based on ethnographic research conducted in national newsrooms covering events taking place in Tokyo, and in local newsrooms covering events taking place in regional areas throughout the rest of the country. This dual focus immediately draws attention to the contrast that is normally drawn between national/local in terms of discourse and production; “national” news is broadcast from Tokyo, but it is constructed largely from reports submitted by “local” news staff.

One set of questions this dissertation addresses regards the production process of national news. What routines are involved in the production of news? Who makes decisions regarding content and style? How are local news items incorporated into national news formats? Is there room for local news producers to incorporate their own values/politics into the national news?

A second issue this dissertation addresses is the role culture plays in the practice of journalism. How do cultural practices involving interpersonal communication, group commitment, deference to age/tenure hierarchy, and corporate employment affect the way reporters report and editors edit? How to they affect the way news staff identify as professionals? How do they affect the way Japanese journalists define the notions of objectivity and newsworthiness?

This dissertation addresses these two issues through a sociological analysis of newsrooms as institutional organizations, and through an anthropological analysis of news production as cultural practice. It portrays news simultaneously as a tool of bureaucratic reform via coverage of scandal and political conflict, and an enforcer of social stasis through its portrayal of the Japanese public as ethnically and culturally homogeneous and Japanese society as meritocratic.

Research material is drawn from observations made between 1994–6 in five newsrooms: NHK and Fuji TV in Tokyo, UHB and HTB in Sapporo, and NHK Okinawa in Naha. Major case studies include news coverage of Okinawa Rape Incident, the Kobe Earthquake, the sinking of the Estonia Ferry, and the hijacking of a passenger flight in Hakodate.