Italian media corrected by its audience on Japan earthquake

The earthquake that struck Japan on 11 March also shook Italian media outlets, with the audience protesting about their output.

TV and newspaper reporters who were sent to the afflicted areas were blamed for failing to provide concise and reliable news, and accused of exaggeration and inaccuracy.

These were some of the offending articles:

- "[Tokyo] is today a capital in agony. It is about to collapse and is expecting the worst" (left)

- "Peppe is the last Italian in Tokyo" (later revised)

- "Photographs from Saitama, the stadium-shelter of the contaminated people".

The tone of the articles, in La Repubblica and Il Corriere della Sera - two of Italy's largest newspapers -angered some readers, as it didn't match what they were experiencing in Tokyo or elsewhere in the country.

It didn't take long for some Japan-savvy Italians to start sending letters of protest to the editors.

An Italian group called Giappone Shinjitu (Japan Truth) was created on Facebook to gather factual information. Its purpose resembles that of the website Wall of Shame where people can report inaccurate, speculative or sensationalist articles on the earthquake and the ensuing nuclear crisis.

"Now we have the chance to check facts," said Giappone Shinjitu group founder Paola Teresa Ghirotti, a photographer specialising in Japanese matters and a member of the Italian Association for Japanese Studies (Aistugia).

Along with some of the 1,300 followers of the group, Ghirotti began to cross-check articles. According to their findings, "The names of the people [quoted in the articles] were real but they were attributed to different people," said Shinjitu.

For instance, the name of a Japanese company spokesman in an article by the Associated Press became a fireman in an Italian article, according to the list of inconsistencies published by the group.

News and facts were often mixed with opinions and other stereotypes about the "samurai spirit" of the Japanese people (below, page translated into English by Google Translate). With a community of 3,000 Italians living temporarily or permanently in Japan, and a good percentage of Japanese speakers among them, the apocalyptic tone of the articles was promptly contradicted and inaccurate information was confuted.

"Those who live in Japan just report what they see and hear, while a correspondent reconstructs the facts and often applies Italian filters," commented Francesco Formiconi, president of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Japan. "[This time] the journalists overlooked their duty to consider the importance of truthful information for the [Italian expats] who decided to stay in Japan."

As a result of cost-cutting and the growing interest in China - which recently overtook Japan as the second-largest economy in the world - many foreign newsrooms have shut down their Tokyo bureaux. There are only three Italian media correspondents in Japan: from the national wire agency ANSA, Sky TV and the daily Il Manifesto.

After the earthquake, many correspondents with little experience of Japan and no knowledge of the language were sent to report on the natural disaster and nuclear emergency.

According to Mikihito Tanaka, Associate Professor at the Journalism School of Waseda University and research manager at the Science Media Center in Tokyo, "For the foreign media, this may have been the 'horror island beyond the sea' and a chance to sell more copies and increase audience through fear-mongering. Or, from a more positive perspective, it was a chance to improve energy policies in their own country. However, what many of those journalists didn't realise was that, in the age of internet, language boundaries can be overcome in an instant and their news can easily influence the people involved in the event."

For ANSA Italian correspondent Antonio Fatiguso, who has been living in Japan for three years, it is also a matter of knowing the country: "Someone who has been living for years in Japan perceives things that a reporter who is 'catapulted' here cannot."

While sensationalist coverage of the Tohoku earthquake provoked particularly strong reactions among Italian readers, in comparison to that of other disasters such as the Wenchuan earthquake, experts said this kind of coverage by Italian media is no exception.

Journalist and media consultant Vittorio Pasteris said the Italian media do not have a long tradition of reporting from foreign countries. "Sadly, we are a country which for years has been restricted to Italo-centric information," Pasteris explained.

He also attributed part of the responsibility for that to Italian readers: "Italians digest whatever they're fed." But this time it was different: Italian readers sent critical comments and the newspapers were forced to revise and correct them.

"What was striking, especially at the beginning of the coverage, was the absence of any basic scientific knowledge about the earthquake and the radiation or nuclear power in general," Professor Tanaka said, referring to European media as a whole.

Readers acted as proof-readers and fact-checkers, shaking an information system in which news has traditionally travelled one way: from the reporter to the audience. "The good thing is that, in the era of globalisation, such sensationalism goes together with scepticism," said Professor Tanaka, who added that, as a Japanese national, he was more upset by the "entertaining tone" of many news stories than by their sensationalist aspect.

Akio Fujiwara, Italian correspondent for the Japanese daily Mainichi Shinbun, agreed with Tanaka's view, saying there is a need for more sang-froid among reporters. "[It would be appropriate] to report precise information and explain the meaning of the cold hard facts, like in the case of the plutonium leaked [from the nuclear plant]," he said. "If there are any doubts, then we must also report, in concrete terms, the reasons for these doubts."

According to Fujiwara, some Italian and foreign television stations were more misleading than the newspapers. On many channels news presenters spoke over old and stark images (showing the exploding reactors, for example) that were played on loop. "They didn't lie, but without a thorough explanation of what is being shown people get scared."

With mainstream Italian media losing credibility, audiences shifted their attention towards alternative sources of information such as social networking platforms.

"This demonstrates the weaknesses of the old information system in which the veracity of a reporter's observations used to be taken for granted," said Marco Del Bene, Professor of Japanese language and history at La Sapienza University in Rome.

"Now there is a concrete risk for the traditional media," Professor Del Bene warned. "When the official channels lose their credibility, anybody can rustle up information that cannot be verified. I trust journalists, but they have to be more trustworthy than bloggers."

This article was adapted from a feature published by the European Journalism Centre. It was written by Alessia Cerantola, a journalist and video-maker who has collaborated with the major Italian newspapers and magazines, covering Japanese and South Korean issues, and Scilla Alecci, a Tokyo-based freelance journalist and TV producer, and Japanese co-editor for Global Voices Online.