Recently, I happened to find that Japanese mass media was being discussed on Twitter. The current anti-Japan demonstrations in China seemed to trigger the discussion. In this discussion, a well-known Chinese man who has been living in Japan for over twenty years pointed out that Japanese people tend to believe the news reports and the comments made by mass media without trying to make sure whether or not what mass media says is reliable and without trying to think about what mass media intends to do. I thought he was basically not wrong. However, his single careless, misleading Tweet fueled the discussion. He quoted a survey result to back up his statement, saying that the survey shows that Japan has the highest percentage of people who trust in mass media among the countries surveyed. He added that this Japan's percentage is higher than China's, and much higher than Britain's and America's. Unfortunately, he didn't attach the link to the data quoted.
His statement intrigued me, so I tried looking for the survey on the internet. Luckily, I was able to find it easily (click here). According to the site, some universities and research institutes from over ten countries worked closely and conducted the survey. Regarding each of the nine institutions/organizations/systems, around 1000 people over 18 in each of 18 countries were questioned whether or not they could trust it. Please see the bar graph in the link. Each figure in the graph is the sum of the percentage of "Yes-very reliable" and that of "lean Yes-a little reliable".
Although the survey was conducted about ten years ago and the site doesn't mention the details, I find the result interesting. I think that you can learn some tendencies from it. As for Japan, you can see that Japanese people don't trust the Japanese government and the Diet. Only given that the Japanese Prime Minister frequently changes in the past twenty years, the result is convincing. As the aforementioned Chinese man said, the survey shows that 70% of the Japanese people surveyed trust newspapers and magazines.
I can guess some reasons why Japanese people tend to take a positive attitude toward newspapers and magazines. However, I think that we, Japanese people, need to improve our ability to evaluate the information reported by mass media and read the situations behind it. Today, you can obtain abundant information, so the importance of this ability is growing.
*the 18 countries (The vertical axis of the bar graph, from top left to bottom right) :
-日本: Japan,
-韓国 : South Korea
-スウェーデン: Sweden
-カナダ: Canada
-米国: America
-フィリピン: Philippines
-中国: China
-インド: India,
-英国: The UK
-フランス: France
-ドイツ: Germany
-オランダ: the Netherlands
-イタリア: Italy
- ロシア: Russia
-ナイジェリア: Nigeria
-イラン: Iran.
*the 9 institutions/organizations/systems questioned (The horizontal axis of the bar graph, from left to right):
-新聞・雑誌: newspapers and magazines
-軍隊: the army of your country, as for Japan, the Self Defense Force
-警察: the police of your country
-国連: United Nations
-労働組合: Labor Unions of your country
-行政: the government of your country
-大企業: Large corporations of your country
-国会: the Diet/the Congress of your country
-宗教団体: religious organizations of your country
