Abstract
The media landscape is in the vortex of dramatic change. The change in the landscape is forcing journalism, which has long been the responsibility of the mass media, to undergo a substantial transformation.
At the same time, we believe that some areas must change, and others must not change in journalism, which should be recognized to support a sound democracy.
How should journalists and organizations transform the areas that must change and maintain the areas that must be secured? If this issue is left untouched without proper explanations, public understanding of journalism will become more uncertain and their trust in journalism will deteriorate at an accelerated pace.
With this in mind, we started investigating the current state of journalism in a concrete manner, turning our attention to the newsroom.
The series centered on interviews, asking news senders about their mindsets towards their practices in news reporting and production. In interviews, we prioritized understanding interviewees’ motivations for and viewpoints on news reporting and program production, ingenuity in news gathering, and awareness of the issues. Then, we examined the significance and challenges they present in the current media landscape from our own perspectives.
We hope our report on the current state of journalism, including ongoing challenges, can contribute to promoting viewers’ understanding of journalism and anchoring their trust in any way.
This series is a reprinting of the past three articles that reported examples of practices developed in NHK’s local stations. As these articles featured only reporters and TV directors, we plan to survey a wider range of people involved in news reporting and news programs in our future research, which will also look into efforts made by other media than NHK.
