Makoto Watanabe has never forgotten the day when his previous employer, one of the largest Japanese newspapers, retreated from his largest investigation hills about the Fukushima nuclear disaster: that workers fled the plant manager orders.
It was 11 years ago and Asahi Shimbun had get under fire Of the other supporters of the media and the government, who said the newspapers had misrepresented what were only garbled instructions. After saying that it was behind the story, Asahi suddenly at a press conference and slipped it.
Later, the newspapers glowed the investigative group he was working on, which created this article and tells reporters to be less controversial against the authorities. Mr. Watanabe has left his work in the leading newspaper, which is a rare step in Japan. But what he did next time was more unusual: Mr. Watanabe launched the first non -profit non -profit organization of Japan dedicated to investigative journalism.
“The newspapers were more interested in the protection of their privileged approach than about informing their readers,” Mr. Watanab said. “I wanted to create new media that wouldn’t be dressed.”
Eight years later, his Tokyo Investigative Newsroom Tansa remains small. As the editor -in -chief, he supervises the staff of two full -time reporters, volunteers and trainees. Recently, they worked in a Spartan room with two small tables and shelves on the second floor of the Nelescript office building in Tokyo.
But Tansa, which is roughly translated as a “deep investigation”, finally makes a mark. Last year she published a number of articles that exposed decades of forced sterilization Among the mentally handicapped people, it forces the government to issue an apology and to pass the law to pay compensation to the victims. Japanese public transmitter NHK signed an agreement to use some TANSA content.
The non -profit organization, which had a budget of 2024 in the amount of 60 million yen, or about $ 400,000, was funded exclusively by gifts and private grants, recorded a constant increase in the number of readers who support it with monthly contributions. Mr. Watanabe plans to hire two new journalists this spring, including one of the other big newspapers.
“People are beginning to realize that we are worth something else,” said Mr. Watanabe, sitting in his editorial office, while the reporter near the online archive for data on industrial pollutants.
Like Mr. Watanabe, reporters were attracted by chances to make more independent journalism and look for voices ignored by the Japanese main press. “Only in Tanse we start stories by asking,” Who is injured? “Said Mariko Tsuji, a reporter who left a prominent magazine to join the non -profit organization.
It is an approach that Mr. Watanabe has said that he is returning to high school experience when he saw classmates who chose a girl with physical and mental disabilities. Purchased, wrote a description of how the behavior hurts her feelings and published him on the school wall. To his own surprise, bullying stopped.
“He taught me that I could bring a change in words,” he said.
Ten years later, Mr. Watanabe still has the cherubic features of the boy on the pitch, with energy and eagerness to match. But it was through the attempt and mistakes that he found his passion for a demanding official narration, which remains rare in Japanese journalism.
He experienced the first excitement of journalism when he joined Asahi in 2000 after working briefly on the television network. He exhibited a purchase of voting in rural areas and the failure of air traffic administrators that resulted in almost ladies.
As recognition of his SCOOPS Asahi, he accepted his application for connection to a new group, which created the newspaper to perform long -term investigative projects. He loved freedom to jump on the topic on the topic, but as he did, he began to come across resistance in his own newspaper.
He returned to the newslets of newspapers in the newspaper, who were located in the so -called press clubs, which were offices within the government agencies that covered. These reporters Asahi internally complained about the critical stories of their group that angered their resources, but Mr. Watanabe refused them as too dependent on the authorities for information.
In May 2014, the group published Fukushima Scoop, which rival media and political supporters of the then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe caused too sensational. Reporters of the press club inside Asahi, whose resentment was built, used it to hit. Mr. Watanabe said they convinced the newspaper to turn the article four months after it appeared and later dissolved the examination group.
In response to Asahi questions, he stated that he had renewed pressure to investigate journalism led by another part of the newspaper.
Mr. Watanabe joined another former Asahi reporter at the start of the startup, who first appointed Chronicle Waded after the university that gave them time support. They made the non -profit organization to prove their autonomy – from corporate sponsors and political system.
“We wanted to show that we are standing next to our readers outside the circle of power,” Mr. Watanabe said.
To return home, the non -profit organization dealt with media corruption in its first series of articles that revealed payments to the main intelligence companies by a large advertising company in exchange for positive coverage of their clients.
Since then, Mr. Watanabe has introduced a deeply reported investigation that has not been seen in most traditional media. At the same time, Tansa has published 75 articles on chemical pollution. Another series, about suicide caused by bullying at high school in Nagasaki, reached 48 installments.
While the co -founder later left, Mr. Watanabe was stuck with a small operation, although his reports ignored the journalists of the establishment. It took years, but Tansa finally begins to excel in the media environment, which has long dominated older newspapers and television networks.
Tansa also wins overseas in overseas, where it is the only investigative non -profit organization from Japan in Global investigative journalistic networkInternational group with approximately 250 members.
“Japan is still dominated by established media that give no other narration of no space,” he said William HorsleyInternational director of the media freedom at the University of Sheffield. “Tansa is an exception that fills the gap.”
Mr. Watanabe hopes that the reporters he accepts will allow him to do more cross -border cooperation. But he also sees storm clouds on the horizon at home. Like other parts of the world, right -wing populism and media politicians grow in Japan and last year police in Kagoshima attacked a small online media After publishing stories criticizing the investigation.
In such a hostile environment, “the need will be stronger than ever for a media market that will not give up,” he said.
