Abstract
As part of “NHK BUNKEN FORUM 2022” organized by the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute, our team held a symposium online on March 3rd, 2022 to discuss the broadcasting of the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games and its legacy. We invited as panelists, Higuchi Masayuki, Director-General, Headquarters for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, NHK, Ota Shinya, Chief Producer, WOWOW INC., and Kishida Nami, writer, who also appeared on NHK’s live Paralympic coverage as a guest commentator. The discussion included reports on NHK’s efforts made for the Tokyo Paralympics broadcasting and findings from the Institute’s public opinion surveys. We also interviewed Goto Yuki beforehand, who had contributed to the broadcasting as one of the reporters with disabilities that NHK had recruited. Her remarks on her experience working in the Paralympic broadcasts as a person with a disability deepened the discussion.
Mr. Higuchi reported NHK’s initiatives for featuring people with disabilities as reporters and other on-screen contributors based on its grand policy of “conveying the excitement of the Paralympic Games as sports,” centering on the broadcast of sporting events. Mr. Ota presented a documentary series on para-athletes WHO I AM—a co-project of WOWOW and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) that had been broadcast since 2016, through which he shared the purpose of the series “breaking down social barriers” and multi-faceted media promotions started from the project. Ms. Kishida frankly talked about how she had perceived the Tokyo Paralympics broadcasts and how she had been simply moved by the Paralympians’ commitment to becoming happier through sports, from a standpoint of a commentator, a viewer, and an individual living with family members with disabilities.
As a legacy of the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics broadcasts, “working together” with persons with disabilities was presented, based on an example shared by Ms. Goto in her interview that a change had been generated through the build-up of communication with the team members of the program production. The symposium was concluded with a remark on the importance of continuing efforts for achieving a society where diverse people can live together through broadcasting, using the 2020 Paralympic broadcasts as a starting point.
