TEMPLE: Common ground in Japan, U.S.

Published July 7, 2007 at midnight

Text size

More Opinion Columns & Blogs

Sometimes it takes leaving home to get a fresh perspective.

That's why I encourage young people to try to see at least some small part of the rest of the world before they take on the responsibilities of adulthood in America. There's nothing quite like finding yourself in a foreign land, not just to learn about the new place and its people but also for what travel teaches about your own country.

My wife, Judith, and I were reminded of the value of getting a taste of life in a different society during a recent visit to Japan, where former Rocky Mountain News photographer Todd Heisler and I were invited to participate in a journalism symposium and workshop.

Asahi Shimbun, a newspaper with 8 million circulation, runs what it calls an Insititute for Journalism, in part to respond to what it sees as "increasing public sensitivity towards human rights, personal information and privacy issues, and a growing public distrust of the media." Sound familiar? Why, just while I was gone the Rocky had complaints about our coverage of the illegal immigration debate, charges against Judge Larry Manzanares and Denver's 32nd PrideFest.

The Japanese paper's journalists had seen our Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the shootings at Columbine High School, the 2002 summer of forest fires and how Marines take care of the families of their fallen brothers. They wanted us to participate in a program they called "Witness to Disaster - Reporting Accidents and War."

Over the course of a few days, we learned that journalists in a society much different from our own confront many of the same difficult issues we face here. And that we share a similar goal, in the words of Asahi Shimbun's top editor, Hidetoshi Sotooka, to produce a "user-friendly must-read newspaper."

We heard Japanese journalists asking many of the same questions we ask here. What is the responsibility of a journalist? When is it appropriate to take photographs? What photographs are appropriate to publish in a newspaper?

It turns out that their answers are not so different from our own at the Rocky. And many of the lessons they've learned from their experiences with victims echo the lessons we've learned here, especially from Columbine. They described an elementary school stabbing rampage in Osaka, where a former janitor killed eight children in 2001. We heard of the anger of one victim's father against the media and how his attitude changed over time, in part because of the relationship he developed with a journalist. And we saw the challenges of covering a 2005 train wreck that took the lives of 107 people, where at least one photographer was torn between helping victims and taking pictures.

What I learned, listening to their stories, was that many of the conflicts we face here over the responsibility of a journalist are inherent to the craft. If we say we're doing our work in the public interest, as journalists there believe as well, what does that mean? How do we balance privacy and the public interest? Does public interest mean what interests the public? To some extent. But pushed to an extreme, such journalism loses its moral standing, journalists from both sides of the Pacific agreed.

However, as we know from our own experiences during the past few weeks, journalism is the rare business that regularly angers its customers - perhaps the only such business. My experience is that it can anger its customers even when it fulfills its role as a witness.

The biggest recent controversy regarding our coverage arose over portraits of three gay couples on the front page June 25. We had 37 cancellations and dozens more complaints, many like this one: "Mr. Temple, Great Shame on you for running this garbage." I'm sorry, but our role is to accurately reflect our community, to open the door to let readers meet others. When groups congregate in Civic Center, it doesn't matter in terms of our coverage whether they be breast cancer survivors, supporters of Martin Luther King or people whose sexuality sets them apart.

On this issue, as with the Manzanares case, the real rub seemed to be our front page, which is bold and direct in a way that many other papers' aren't.

We didn't hear any complaints on June 14, the day our front page featured a booking mug of Manzanares and a big headline: "Ex-judge faces trio of felonies."

But after his tragic suicide barely more than a week later, some were angry and cited our front page for what they deemed its insensitivity. They didn't mention the almost identical front-page treatment we gave to charges against former Jeffco Treasurer Mark Paschall in January.

By any measure, such charges against a former judge who had to quit the highest legal job at City Hall over his conduct are newsworthy. As was the fact that pornography on the computer he was accused of stealing might have explained his motive.

And then there were those who told us they were sick of seeing "Mexicans" on our front page after we showed a legal immigrant who would be affected by the Senate's rejection of an immigration bill. They perceived such photos as proof that we "side" with illegal immigrants.

Watching this criticism from afar, my time with Japanese journalists reminded me that what's most important is that any newsroom discuss issues of judgment and fairness, of balancing privacy and the public interest. I can assure you that's what we do. And I can assure you that you contribute to that conversation by sharing your views.

But I also was reminded that in a free society there's no way a newspaper is not going to anger its readers, whether here or in Japan.

I know my words can't ease the wrongs some may feel. But I ask you, when you're angry with us, to step back and think of the newspaper as you would a friend. Sometimes you will disagree with a friend, even seriously. But you still try to remember that there is value in keeping the doors open, because in the end there is so much common ground we share, and not just the soil on which we stand.

John Temple can be reached at editor@RockyMountainNews.com or by mail at 101 W. Colfax Ave., Suite 500, Denver, CO 80202.

Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News