Japan's new privacy laws have sent a chill through the publishing community. The package of five laws, passed by the Diet on May 23, will force corporations to deal with personal information in a more transparent way. But do the laws, as one journalist puts it, create a "dangerous side effect"? The country's magazine publishers definitely think so. The new laws say any company collecting personal information must notify the person whose data is being collected, must explain why the data is being collected and must agree not to send that information to a third party without the individual's consent. "Personal data" refers to anything from a person's name and address to his or her credit history, medical records or history of renting videos, for example. But magazine publishers are disturbed by what the law doesn't say. The law specifically exempts certain media organizations from the new restrictions because journalists wouldn't be able to do their jobs effectively if they had to constantly reveal whom they are investigating and why.
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"I believe in the future we will have all our preliminary research stopped" when looking into a scandal. --Ryokichi Yama, Japan Magazine Publishers' Association |
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The law exempts "broadcasting agencies" (hosokikan), "newspaper companies" (shimbunsha) and "news agencies" (tsushingaisha), but does not mention magazines -- which in Japan are often bawdy publications that feature a heady mix of scandal, gossip and pornography.Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's administration says that magazine publishers are protected by the phrase "and other news organizations," which is included in the law. But magazine publishers aren't so sure. They feel that they are the real targets of the privacy laws, which went into effect immediately after passing the Diet, although the government says most of the provisions will not be enforced until sometime in the next two years. "We felt that if 'magazine publishing' wasn't specifically mentioned in the bill, we could be pushed to the side," says Ryokichi Yama, the point man for the Japan Magazine Publishers' Association in the fight against the privacy laws. "We told (the lawmakers) to write it into the bill. We said write into the bill that broadcasters, newspapers, wire services and publishers are exempt. But they told us they wouldn't. "I was told directly by members of the administration and the Diet that there were elements in the cabinet, the administration and the Liberal Democratic Party that just couldn't forgive magazines (for their coverage of political scandals). They just don't want to include them under the rubric of mainstream media," says Yama, who testified before the Diet on the privacy bills this spring.
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The government says that the laws are needed to deal with an increasingly networked society, not weekly magazines. |
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Japanese magazines have published a number of investigations that have cost politicians and CEOs their jobs, but their sensational headlines and salacious story mix mean many official sources won't talk to them, and many consider magazines scandal rags -- not "real" journalism.Members of the Japan Magazine Publishers' Association -- 91 companies publishing 1,200 magazines -- have vowed to band together if the privacy laws are used to stifle their news reporting. The association members say that if a politician tries to interfere with a story, they will publish the details of that interference. Debate over the privacy laws has been raging in Japan for over a year. The government's original set of bills was introduced in March 2001. The Liberal Democratic Party finally abandoned that version of the bills in December 2002 after newspapers, TV broadcasters, magazine publishers, freelance journalists -- just about everybody associated with newsgathering -- complained that the bills were overarching and would restrict freedom of speech. A week after the original set of bills was killed, the LDP began circulating a new draft with some key changes. Gone were the "fundamental principles" for handling private data that had so riled the media during 2002. Those principles would have held the media to the same standards as other corporations when it came to handling private data. The media argued at the time that those principles could be manipulated by the government to stifle the press. The new draft also included a reference to respect for the freedom of the press and a rather unwieldy definition of news reporting as activities "aimed at informing unspecified and numerous people of the objective facts as facts (including stating opinions or comments based on news reports)," according to an unofficial translation provided by the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association. The changes were enough to tip the balance in favor of passage of the bills. Resistance to the laws in the journalistic community was still strong, but certain key voices, including the world's largest newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, took a conciliatory stance to the revised bills. They were introduced in the Diet in March and passed two months later.
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