夕陽西下？調查報導讓朝日新聞面臨嚴峻挑戰（一）／朱弘川編譯

　
The team had been producing award winning journalism for three years, but the story on the workers would be the last for some of its ace reporters. And its publication in May 2014 would come to mark the demise of one of the most serious efforts in recent memory by a major Japanese news organization to embrace a more independent approach to journalism.

　
　　這個新聞團隊已經連三年獲獎，但對某些記者來說，這篇關於工人的報導可能會是最難以忘懷的作品。 這篇報導於2014年5月的出版，意味著一家大型日本新聞機構為記者爭取更加獨立的新聞作業方式，所做最嚴肅的努力之一。

　
The hastiness of the Asahi’s retreat raised fresh doubts about whether such watchdog journalism—an inherently risky enterprise that seeks to expose and debunk, and challenge the powerful—is even possible in Japan’s big national media, which are deeply tied to the nation’s political establishment.

　
　　但朝日新聞如此匆忙地退出不免讓人懷疑，這種監督新聞學本身就是帶有風險的事業，不僅揭露事件背後的真相，也挑戰權力，尤其日本大型的全國性媒體，也可能和國家的政治體制有所關連。

　
The editors at Asahi, considered the “quality paper” favored by intellectuals, knew the culture they were facing, but they saw the public disillusionment in Japan that followed the nuclear plant disaster as the opportunity launch a bold experiment to reframe journalism.

　
　　朝日新聞的編輯們認為，「質報」之所以深受知識分子喜愛，就是因為能點出目前社會所面臨的問題。當他們看到福島核災之後日本公眾的失落，認為是時候提出一個大膽的實驗來重塑新聞事業。

 
No more pooches　

不做政府的傳聲筒

　
On the sixth floor of its hulking headquarters overlooking Tokyo’s celebrated fish market, the newspaper in October 2011 hand-picked 30 journalists to create a desk dedicated to investigative reporting, something relatively rare in a country whose big national media favor cozy ties with officials via so-called press clubs. The clubs are exclusive groups of journalists, usually restricted to those from major newspapers and broadcasters, who are stationed within government ministries and agencies, ostensibly to keep a close eye on authority. In reality, the clubs end up doing the opposite, turning the journalists into uncritical conduits for information and narratives put forth by government officials, whose mindset the journalists often end up sharing.

　
　　在能俯瞰東京著名魚市場的朝日新聞總部6樓，2011年10月，朝日新聞挑選了30名記者建立了一個專門進行調查報導的團隊，這在一個媒體習慣透過記者俱樂部與官方維持良好關係的國家來說，算是相對罕見。這些記者俱樂部是記者專屬的團體，成員僅限於幾家主要報紙和廣播機構。他們駐守在政府機構內，表面上密切監督著公權力，實際上，俱樂部做了相反的事情，把記者變成不加批判的工具，以獲得政府官員的消息，官員們也認定記者們會彼此交流這些消息。

　
The choice to head of the new section was unusual: Takaaki Yorimitsu, a gruff, gravelly-voiced outsider who was not a career employee of the elitist Asahi, and had been head-hunted from a smaller regional newspaper for his investigative prowess. Yorimitsu set an iconoclastic tone by taping a sign to the newsroom door declaring “Datsu Pochi Sengen,” or “No More Pooches Proclamation”—a vow that his reporters would no longer be kept pets of the press clubs, but true journalistic watchdogs.

　
　　要能勝任這個新團隊的主管得要有異於常人的特質：依光隆明，一個看來粗獷，帶有低沉嗓音的局外人，過去並不為朝日新聞服務，而是在一個較小的地區報紙展現調查報導的本領而被相中。 依光隆明一反傳統的在記者室門上貼了一個標語：「不做政府看門狗」（Datsu Pochi Sengen或No More Pooches Proclamation）。依光隆明對外宣稱，他的記者不再是新聞俱樂部的寵物，未來將實踐真正的新聞監督。

　
The new section gave reporters a broad mandate to range across the Asahi’s rigid internal silos in search of topics, while also holding to higher journalistic standards, such as requiring using the names of people quoted in stories instead of the pseudonyms common in Japanese journalism.

　
　　新團隊給了記者一個使命，不僅要革新朝日僵硬的內部文化，以找尋報導主題，同時也抱有更高的新聞標準，像是要求在報導中引用受訪者的真名，而不是日本新聞中常見的假名。

　
The Investigative Reporting Section proved an instant success, winning Japan’s top journalism award two years in a row for its exposure of official coverups and shoddy decontamination work around the nuclear plant, which was crippled when a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out vital cooling systems. The section’s feistier journalism offered hope of attracting younger readers at a time when the 7 million-reader Asahi and Japan’s other national dailies, the world’s largest newspapers by circulation, were starting to feel the pinch from declining sales.

　
　　這個調查報導團隊，因為揭露了官方掩蓋的黑心去污工程，導致核電廠遭遇地震和海嘯時，冷卻系統卻失去功用的真相，連續兩年贏得日本新聞獎肯定。正當擁有700萬讀者的朝日新聞和日本的其他日報，在這個有著世界上最大的報紙流通量的國家，為了銷售量下滑而感到痛苦時，如此充滿活力的新聞改革讓年輕讀者看到希望。

　
“The Asahi Shimbun believes such investigative reporting is indispensable,” the newspaper’s president at the time, Tadakazu Kimura, declared in an annual report in 2012. The new investigative section “does not rely on information obtained from press clubs, but rather conducts its own steadfast investigations that require real determination.”

　
　　「朝日新聞認為，這種調查報導是不可或缺的」，當時的報社社長木村伊量在2012年的年度報告中表示。新的團隊「不依賴記者俱樂部獲得的消息，而是以真正的決心來實行堅定的新聞調查。」

　
That is why it was all the more jarring when, just two years later, the Asahi abruptly retreated from this foray into watchdog reporting. In September 2014, the newspaper retracted the story it had published in May about workers fleeing the Fukushima plant against orders, punishing reporters and editors responsible for the story, slashing the size of the new section’s staff and forcing the resignation of Kimura, who had supported the investigative push.

　
　　這也是它為何令人不安的原因。僅僅兩年的時間，朝日突然退出了，又回到政府看門狗的角色。 2014年9月，報紙收回了5月份關於工人違反命令逃離核電廠的報導，懲處了與報導相關的記者和編輯，同時削減了新團隊的規模，並迫使當初支持調查報導木村伊量辭職。

　
A newspaper-appointed committee of outside experts later declared that the article, which the Asahi had trumpeted as a historic scoop, was flawed because journalists had demonstrated “an excessive sense of mission that they ‘must monitor authority.’”

While the section was not closed down altogether, its output of major investigative articles dropped sharply as the remaining journalists were barred from writing about Fukushima.

　
　　一家報紙指定的外部委員會指出，這篇被朝日新聞視為有重大意義的報導，因為記者必須監督權威而表現出「過度的使命感」，所以仍有許多缺陷。雖然這個部門沒有完全被關閉，但因為剩下的記者被禁止報導福島核災的新聞，以致於調查報導的產出急劇的下降。

　
Emasculating the Asahi　

朝日神話不再

 
The abrupt about-face by the Asahi, a 137-year-old newspaper with 2,400 journalists that has been postwar Japan’s liberal media flagship, was was an early victory for the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which had sought to silence critical voices as it moved to roll back Japan’s postwar pacifism, and restart its nuclear industry.
　

　　朝日新聞擁有137年的歷史，擁有2,400名記者，是戰後日本自由派媒體的代表，如此突然的轉變，被視為首相安倍晉三的一個早期勝利，因為安倍政府試圖讓許多批判的聲音消失，重塑日本戰後的和平主義，和重啟核能工業的發展。

　
“In Japanese journalism, scoops usually just mean learning from the ministry officials today what they intend to do tomorrow,” said Makoto Watanabe, a former reporter in the section who quit the Asahi in March because he felt blocked from doing investigative reporting. “We came up with different scoops that were unwelcome in the Prime Minister’s Office.”

　
　　「以日本新聞業來說，獨家新聞通常只意味著，從政府官員口中得知明天打算做什麼」，因為感覺到被禁止進行調查報導，而在3月離開朝日新聞的記者渡邊誠這麼說。「我們有許多不同的獨家新聞，但在首相辦公室是不受歡迎的。」

 
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作者：Martin Fackler

編譯：朱弘川

原文網址： http://www.cjr.org/the_feature/asahi_shimbun_japan_journalism.php