Japanese journalist Teddy Jimbo was interviewing residents of a refugee camp in Angola when the idea first hit him: He was doing journalism all wrong. He had to find a better way. At the end of an interview with a village chief who had fled his war-torn home, Jimbo asked the usual end-of-discussion question: "Is there anything you'd like our viewers to know?" The chief looked him in the eye and said, "I want your people to be responsible for the actions of your government." The comment rattled Jimbo and changed the course of his career. "The chief was saying if each one of us is responsible, then this shouldn't be happening. It changed my image and understanding of what an international journalist means."
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High production costs make the television networks a slave to ratings, and make much news coverage superficial and sensational. |
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What it didn't mean was doing stories so that Japanese would send blankets and money. What it did mean, says Jimbo, was showing how Japan was part of international problems, how Japanese were electing, paying taxes and giving tools to leaders who were contributing to problems.But doing that type of reporting in Japan, says Jimbo, is "chotto muzukashii" -- complicated. The mainstream press, controlled by five media giants that own most of the large newspapers and TV stations in Japan, shies away from bad-news stories and highly critical reporting, he says. In Japan, the only medium where Jimbo can tell that story is the Internet, he said. Jimbo, 41, is Japan's first Internet videojournalist. He makes his living flying to hot spots around the world and doing environmental documentaries that appear on NHK, Japan's public TV network, and political documentaries that appear on commercial networks such as TV Asahi. Jimbo spends his freelance income on his pet project, Video News Network, a Web site where he netcasts news shows, political commentary and talk shows. VNN netcasts respected programs that attract well-known politicians and commentators, including "World Report," a weekly news program that features mostly social journalism stories from around the world. The site also features "Asia Hotline," a report hosted by a Japanese-speaking Chinese who's an expert on Asia and China, and "Confidential," a political show. Although TV talk shows are the traditional purview of older reporters, Jimbo hosts "Radical Talk on Demand" with Shinji Miyadai, an outspoken and controversial sociology professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University.
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"There's not much of a freelance culture in Japan, partly because traditional news organizations hold a lock on access to information and partly because young journalists don't move from organization to organization." |
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Video News Network has four full-time staffers and four freelance reporters who produce one news program, three talk shows, an e-mail magazine, a print magazine, a book and short video clips for cell phones.In April 2001, VNN began charging about $4.50 a month. Today, there are 4,000 members. It's hardly a living. In this media-saturated nation, where six major television networks are faithfully watched by 95 percent of the country's 128 million residents -- where the circulation of daily newspapers is 71 million and Web sites' page views run into the hundreds of millions every month -- VNN's squeak can barely be heard among the roar.
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