A Public Betrayed

Fülszöveg

$27.95 U.S./$39.95 Can.
A Public
3etrayec
An Inside Look at Japanese Media Atrocities and Their Warnings to the West
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Here is the quintessential example of a people betrayed through the corruption of the veiy news media that ought to be championing their causes. A Public Betrayed exposes deceptions, lies, and abuses of power in Japan that have led to such profound degrees of misunderstanding, confusion, and suffering that they have inspired the phrase "media atrocities." Key examples include:
• Vilifying innocent victims of terrorist attacks
• Denying the Holocaust and supporting anti-Semitism
• Smearing a prominent Buddhist leader
• Whitewashing and denying one of history's worst war crimes, the Nanjing Massacre
• Defaming Second "World "War Japanese military sex slaves or "comfort women"
Thorough, thoughtful, and provocative, this book lays bare the mechanisms and motivations behind these sobering abuses. And as the examples show, the very factors that have... Tovább

Fülszöveg

$27.95 U.S./$39.95 Can.
A Public
3etrayec
An Inside Look at Japanese Media Atrocities and Their Warnings to the West
I <
I !
Here is the quintessential example of a people betrayed through the corruption of the veiy news media that ought to be championing their causes. A Public Betrayed exposes deceptions, lies, and abuses of power in Japan that have led to such profound degrees of misunderstanding, confusion, and suffering that they have inspired the phrase "media atrocities." Key examples include:
• Vilifying innocent victims of terrorist attacks
• Denying the Holocaust and supporting anti-Semitism
• Smearing a prominent Buddhist leader
• Whitewashing and denying one of history's worst war crimes, the Nanjing Massacre
• Defaming Second "World "War Japanese military sex slaves or "comfort women"
Thorough, thoughtful, and provocative, this book lays bare the mechanisms and motivations behind these sobering abuses. And as the examples show, the very factors that have contributed to such injustices in Japan have become increasingly predominant in the news-media sectors of the West—factors such as extreme industry consolidation, the growth of nationalism, intense commercialism, and the erosion of media ethics. The lessons for the rest of the free world could be neither more profound nor more relevant. Now is the time to understand Japan and its media atrocities.
ADAM GAMBLE is a writer and investigative reporter, and the author of In the Footsteps of Thoreau. He has served as publisher at On Cape Publications in Massachusetts since 1995, where he has produced some two-dozen books. During the three years of research that went into A Public Betrayed, he personally interviewed more than 150 individuals.
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TAKESATO WATANABE is a professor of media ethics at Doshisha University in Kyoto and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University in 2001. He is the author of a dozen Japanese-language books, including Information Democracy and the People's Right to Communicate (2000). He is coauthor of the Encyclopedia of Media & Communication Studies (1999). His next book, The Media and Power Structure in Modem Japan, 79,^5—3000, will be published in English in ^005 through Harvard University's East Asia Monograph Series.
ELLIS S. KRAUSS is a professor of Japanese politics and policymaking at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Broadcasting Politics in Japan and the coeditor of Beyond Bilateralism: U.S.-Japan Relations in the New Asia-Pacific and of Media and Politics in Japan.
For more information on,4 Public Betrayed, including supplementary and teaching material, see http://www.apublicbetrayed.com.
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"Media Atrocities" is exactly the noun to use. The authors focus not on physical, militaiy atrocities, but on the equivalent thing that is being done with Japanese news reporting—mangling, suffocating, killing the truth! Atrocious indeed! This is a marvelously illustrated, in-depth piece of research that is both engagingly written and hard-hitting in its message. A great read.
—IVAN P. HALL, Japan historian and author of the book Cartels of the Mind: Japan's Intellectual Closed Shop and of Bamboozled!: How America Loses the Intellectual Game with Japan and Its Implications for Our Future inAsia.
In reading this book, you will learn a great deal about one of the most important media phenomena in the democratic world, and much of what you will discover will, and should, frighten you. Given current trends in some media outlets in the United States toward more sensational "reporting," often with clear, politically biased as well as commercial agendas, one should not read this book as merely a case of some exotic and unique Japanese phenomenon. It describes many issues Americans need to confront now.
—From the foreword to the book by ELLIS S. KRAUSS, professor of Japanese politics and policymaking at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego, author of Broadcasting Politics in Japan, and coeditor of Beyond Bilateralism: U.S. -Japan Belations in the New Asia-Pacific and oi Media and Politics in Japan.
Anyone embarrassed by how little they know about the country with the second-largest economy in the world should read this fascinating book. It examines a phenomenon without parallel in the West: mass-circulation newsmagazines that combine porn with high culture, the worst excesses of tabloid journalism with serious political investigations. While these remarkable magazines can be viewed as a healthy alternative to the "press clubs" and consensual politics of Japan, the authors of this important study reveal a dark side: their virulent anti-Semitism, historical amnesia, ardent nationalism, and bullying intrusions into private lives. This well-written book offers revelatoiy insight into the popular culture of a great nation.
—JAMES CURRAN is a professor of Communications at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of Media and Power, coauthor of Power without Responsibility^, and coeditor of De-Jfestemizing Media Studies and of Mass Media and Society.
ISBN ?-fl^SSb-D4b-fl
5 2 7 9 5
9780895260468 Vissza