Asia is arguably the most important part of the world; it is home to many powerful companies in Japan and South Korea, and to companies that seek to emerge on the world stage in countries like China, Southeast Asia and India. If Americans are to have any idea of the opportunities and challenges these countries bring, they need to know about Asia.
Asia is arguably the most important part of the world in terms of where wealth is being generated today and where it will be generated in coming decades, and yet the U.S. media appears to be in retreat. At the same time, it is home to many powerful companies in Japan and South Korea, and to companies that seek to emerge on the world stage in countries like China, Southeast Asia and India.
If Americans are to have any idea of the opportunities and challenges these countries bring, they need to know about Asia.
I’ve just returned from a reporting trip through Tokyo, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, a region that I’ve covered since first being transferred to Hong Kong in 1979 for United Press International. I also took part in the American media’s broad buildup in the region in the late 1980s and 1990s as World Editor at BusinessWeek.
The Bush Administration’s agenda concentrates on Iraq, nuclear proliferation and various terrorist challenges. These topics should be part of the American media’s agenda, however the mistake editors and producers make is to allow the Bush agenda to crowd out nearly everything else. We are not upholding our role in the American democracy if we don’t insist on covering things that matter, regardless of the current administration’s goals may be.
The way the press corps in Tokyo has been stripped is particularly shocking. Major news organizations have taken correspondents who speak Japanese and transferred them to Hong Kong or Beijing. Decision-makers in New York and Washington don’t seem to understand that putting Japanese-speakers in Chinese-speaking Asia is tantamount to sending Eskimos into the Amazon. They are completely different cultural zones. Business Week, my alma mater, which once had four seasoned Western reporters who spoke varying levels of Japanese, has stripped its bureau and now relies purely on local hires.
To go to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan is to confront the fact that many if not most news organizations have downgraded the caliber of their bureaus by making more local hires of both young foreigners and Japanese and firing or retiring the more seasoned correspondents who speak Japanese.
The reason this is disturbing is that Japan is still the world’s second largest economy, sitting on $13 trillion in household savings. It is a hugely affluent and sophisticated economy and society. The very face of Tokyo has been transformed over the past decade as huge new mini-city complexes like Roppongi Hills and Midtown Tokyo open.
Japanese companies remain far more potent competitors to their American counterparts than China’s or India’s. It is Toyota, after all, that is systematically taking Detroit apart, not Chery of China or Tata Motors of India.
The only region in Asia, home to 60 percent of the world’s population, where the American media is doing an acceptable job is in China. There are hundreds of Western journalists in China and many speak Chinese. They are doing a reasonable job of capturing the complexities of how a nation of 1.3 billion people transforms its economy and its society. Coverage of India, while visible, is just a shadow of the coverage of China. Largely invisible on the American radar screen are Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia.
When I have complained about Japan or Asian coverage to friends who are media decision-makers, they often say, “it’s so expensive.” But this is a cop out. We have a responsibility to make the intellectual and journalistic case to get the budgets that we need to cover the world.
Of course, the root cause of the problem is that the companies and institutions that own the media don’t understand or appreciate that the media has a responsibility to help inform the American citizenry. Even if they seem to be in denial about the rapidly changing world order. The journalistic challenge is to translate what’s happening in Asia in terms that are directly relevant to average Americans. But to do that, we need the budgets to put the right people in the right places. Their own interest is the bottom line, which is absolutely essential to the future well-being of any journalistic organization. But the pursuit of legitimate profit should not come at the expense of eroding the media’s ability to cover issues of burning importance to millions of Americans.