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November.1.2017 “President Trump and Mass media: Reporting in the post truth era”
Mr.Kazuo Abiko, former manager of northeast Asia of the Associated Press
Mr.Kazuo Abiko: He studied journalism in California State University, and studied mass communication in graduate university. He worked for the Associated Press as a manager of northeast Asia, and currently teaches at Global communication Institute in Kanda University of International Studies.
As IT develops, the way people communicate in this world is changing such as utilizing social network in order to communicate with people by American President. Today Mr. Abiko had a lecture for us about current and future media situation in America, and difference between Japanese and American journalism.
At first, he made an emphasis on possessing intellectual curiosity. In this generation, people can gain much information from anywhere else, so he implies that people cannot accept all the information in front of them. We must always be skeptical about the information, and figure out what is hiding from the information, and what is the background. Moreover, searching other media is also important in order to get accurate information.
Moving on to the core topic. How Donald Trump won the election utilizing media? News about his stories occupied 50 % of media at that time. This is one of the reasons. This circumstance occurred because his straight words were picked up in the news, and it became entertain. There is a complete formula enable Trump to appear in media widely.
In terms of history of media, radio used to be a major media connecting politician and citizens, and TV replaced, and then, currently, social network is replacing gradually. Those politicians who use social network as a tool make targets who are not “elites” layer, instead, lower class layer than average. This is because the number is big, and they do not read newspaper nor watch TV, so main way they can get political idea is social network, thus politician can easily seize their heart.
Furthermore, Mr. Abiko explained the current American Media. America regards freedom of report as one of the most important rights to be protected. Therefore when Donald Trump tried to sue Newspaper Company for defamation, his proposal was rejected. If someone wants their suit to be accepted, they need to prove the newspaper company did report news, which they have known it was not true. However when Donald Trump sued, it affected citizens’ reliability to Newspaper Company. On the other hand Donald Trump won citizen’s reliability. And when presidents lost their trust, people would trust media. Thus, there is a correlation between two.
Finally, we learned how different between digitalization of Japanese and American media. “New York Times” is one of the most representative media companies in the United States, but New York Times aim to become not only American represent, but World represent. This company’s consumer targets are “elite in the world”. This is why they promote digitalization positively, and spread part of their services for free. On the other hand, digitalization of Japanese newspaper has not been seen so often, also fee is not cheap. Newspaper companies and advertisement companies protect each other would be one of the backgrounds. It seems hard to achieve Digitalization in Japan.
Through this lecture, students discuss the theme “Is it acceptable for president utilizing social network as personal way?” Students argued the pros and the cons. Those in favor insisted, “Even though they are president, they are still one person, and have right to express their idea,”etc. On the other hand, those who opposed insisted, “President’s opinion should be monitored by others, but social network unable others to do it” or “It is possible that president’s personal opinion would affect diplomatic relationship,”etc.
After the discussion, Mr. Abiko said that a president needs to make ambiguous line between “public” and “private” clear. We could learn not only the current media situation, but also the meaning of media, and how important to have intellectual curiosity in this generation. I would like to say thank you to Mr. Abiko who had a wonderful and worthy lecture for us. Thank you very much.
(Asuka Akazawa)