Watching the extended 7pm news last night on NHK was a salutary lesson on what you get in this country if you fall out of bounds of national opinion. The nation's premier broadcaster spent the first 20 minutes of its flagship news programme going over every possible element of the rescued toddler story, including some pathetic conversations with teary neighbours of the family in question that even the commercial networks would have been embarassed to put out. The next 25 minutes dealt with the much more serious fall out from the earthquake and how things are not getting back to normal quickly (though we did have one reporter in a small village telling us that one woman, and I quote verbatim here, "had a headache and had to get some pills for her ailment"). Then, and only then, did the plight of the accidental tourist get five minutes of air time. It seems the boy who wanted to see what was going on in Baghdad has been abandoned by the public and Japan's national broadcaster alike. The country has other things to occupy itself with just now and any sympathy he may have expected disappeared in the vapour trails of the typhoons I mentioned yesterday.
Posted by Joe at October 29, 2004 10:34 AM