Allow me to vent a bit about the quality of English-language news here in Japan. The big three newspapers (The Japan Times, The Daily Yomiuri, and the Mainichi Daily News) have online editions, but they aren't really reliable sources of news as they are only updated once a day, with news that is often already a day late.
And then there's Japan Today, which offers much faster reporting and frequent updates. And plenty of typos, shoddy translations, factual errors, vague or incomplete stories, and plain old crappy reporting. Why I keep reading is a mystery, but I do, and am often punished for it.
Like this morning, when I read this article about how Japan placed number 5 in a ranking of the world's most peaceful nations. This section caught my eye:
Polling behind Norway, New Zealand, Denmark and Ireland, Japan is the only Group of Eight country to fall in the top 10 of the Global Peace Index — the first study of its kind to compare peace on a worldwide level.
Curious to see where my home country of Canada stands, I did a search and found the Global Peace Index rankings, which lists Canada at number 8. And although my math abilities haven't improved much since I flunked 10th grade math, I'm pretty sure that 8 is less than 10.
Whoever wrote the original article (the "journalists" are never named) is either a worse counter than I am, or is severely lacking in the common knowledge department. True, the author wouldn't be the first Japanese person to not know that Canada is a G8 nation (even my dear husband didn't believe me when I told him, and actually had to look it up on Wikipedia). But the fact that neither the reporter, the translator nor the editor knows that is a little sad.
Turns out the people involved don't know much about anything. Reading on:
Remarking on the United States' poignantly low standing in the index at 96th place out of the 121 countries, just ahead of Iran, Bew pointed out that it was paying the price for extending its militarization beyond its own nation and creating a "pact Americana."
We'll just have to assume that this is what happens when "Pax Americana" is translated from English into Japanese and back again into English. And that the editor was home sick that day.
And yet I keep reading...
I was reading this particular publication via google reader, but after reading what you had to say I decided to unsubscribe. Thanks for the info!
Posted by: claytonian | 2007.05.31 at 03:14 PM
Japan Today just takes the English language news feed from Kyodo. It's Kyodo you need to blame.
Posted by: Tex | 2007.05.31 at 06:16 PM
I usually don't read the Japanese "english" newspapers and have also given up listening to the bilingual versions of the Japanese news too.
Posted by: Kat | 2007.05.31 at 09:23 PM
The online editions are quite miserable but I do have to say, growing up reading the Mainichi Daily News, I find that I know more about various countries around the world because there is a "World" section in the newspaper. It is hard to find International news in the States. You have to actually search for it. I do like to look at Japan Zone for my daily Japanese gossip, though...
Posted by: Caitlin | 2007.06.01 at 04:18 AM
Claytonian is right - Kyodo is the source of all those stupid Japan Today articles that drive everyone crazy. The pattern is always the same: eye-catching headline and a short, useless article filled with either speculation or inaccuracies.
I saw the same article you did on Japan Today and then burst out laughing because the headline was "Japan Ranked as World's 5th Most Peaceful Nation: Report" and the headline for the next story (directly below) was: "Teen who beheaded mother to be detained for 3 months for psychiatric tests"
The juxtaposition was brilliant...
Anyway, check out http://newsonjapan.com/
It's an aggregator of news from all over the world related to Japan - of course, you still get the crappy feeds from the Yomiuri, the Mainichi, etc., but you also get stories from a lot of other wire services and newspapers.
Posted by: tokyolola | 2007.06.01 at 09:03 AM
Claytonian, thanks for the show of solidarity! I didn't know you Yanks cared.
But I sure wish there was another source of frequently updated Japanese news in English...
Tex, I've heard that before. But I've also noticed that the articles often differ slightly on the two sites, and JT often updates their articles with corrections or more information.
Wherever they get their news from, this kind of mistake is inexcusable.
Kat, ugh! Those bilingual news shows are hard to listen to. And I don't really like the format of Japanese news shows (very long, super-indepth segments focusing on a just handful of major news stories, almost always local.)
Caitlin, I didn't realize that. Most of the Toronto papers do have decent world news sections, so much so that I think the Japanese coverage of world news is lacking.
I'll have a look at Japan Zone, thanks for the tip.
Tokyolala, that about sums it up. I agree, those headlines are awful, and the stories themselves incredibly vague. Thanks for sharing the link, I've bookmarked it.
Posted by: Amy | 2007.06.07 at 02:13 PM