Who’s making news in Japan?
Rockinginhakata.com’s Deas hit a little bit on the issue of balanced coverage in Japanese media of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election a couple of weeks ago, and it sparked my curiosity.
I ran each name of the three major candidates through Japanese news sites to see how many hits they came out with. (Clinton as 「クリントン」, Obama as 「オバマ」, and McCain as 「マケイン」)
Hits from some major news sites sites were as follows.
Asahi.com (朝日新聞)
Clinton: 628
Obama: 530
McCain: 268
Mainichi.co.jp (毎日新聞)
Obama: 153
Clinton: 152
McCain: 71
Yomiuri.co.jp (読売新聞)
Clinton: 243
Obama: 171
McCain: 77
In all cases, McCain had around half the amount of hits as the lowest Democrat, at most. Clinton had at least as many hits as Obama, most of the time she had considerably more. Some of the Obama hits were just regarding gimmick news related to the candidate and a small Japanese town sharing the same name. (小浜)
The Democratic primary election is still undecided which explains partly why there is such a large discrepancy in numbers, but even so, it’s not uncommon to be asked by the average Japanese person if you will be voting for “Clinton or Obama”. Again, the reason for that is justified in that (from my own possibly skewed experience) there are more Americans in Japan who claim themselves as Democrats than as Republicans. (Which is itself an interesting research project)
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