David Jacobson
Most drastically, the plan calls for laying off 1,200 employees, 10 percent of NHK's workforce. If realized, it would mark the public broadcaster's biggest staff reduction since its founding in 1926.
According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the plan emphasizes natural attrition through retirement as well as curtailing the number of new recruits over the course of three years beginning next April. The layoffs will affect reporters, program directors and technical staff.
They are intended to address NHK's worsening financial situation as more and more viewers refuse to pay its mandatory licensing fees. These fees, which are required of every household in Japan that owns a television, have accounted for 96.4 percent of NHK's total revenues. They amount to about 1,400 yen ($13) per month for a color TV.
As of the end of July, the number of households refusing to pay licensing fees had risen to 1.17 million.
In the last year, a growing number of Japanese has refused to pay the fees in protest over a series of embezzlement scandals and allegations that NHK censored its own programming due to political pressure. The scandals claimed the job of former Chairman Katsuji Ebisawa, who resigned in January.
The revival plan also contains proposals for cracking down on non-paying viewers. NHK says it will initiate legal action against them by sending letters through summary courts (essentially small claims courts) demanding payment. However, it will not "forcefully exact payment," NHK President Genichi Hashimoto told The Asahi Shimbun earlier this month.
In the revival plan, NHK reaffirms its commitment to relying on viewer fees for its revenue.
"Precisely because we place the burden [of our finances] broadly on our viewers through licensing fees and do not accept advertising revenues or taxes," it says, "we can deliver news and programming without being a prisoner to viewer ratings or specific points of view."
And in a nod to criticism that NHK bowed to political pressure to censor a controversial 2001 documentary about Japan's responsibility for World War II (for background on this issue, see JMR's “Asahi Revisits NHK Censorship Allegations”), the plan notes that the mission of public broadcasting is "to attain autonomy and self-reliance, without being pressured or influenced by anyone, and to supply to all, without prejudice, information and richness of culture that is the foundation of all decision-making."
 Zijin (www.zijin.net) studies journalism ,communication, Internet communication. As a privately run website,it was founded on March 18th,2000. Originally named “Zijin Journalism Review", it changed to Zijin on October 18th, 2000. Started by Mr. Zizoo, Zijin is one of China's earlist academic websites on journalism and communication, well-known among its counterparts in China. |
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