The Profession of Minority Journalists: The Voices of Zainichi (ethnic Korean) Journalists in Mainstream Newsrooms

This study aims to explore how minority journalists follow their profession in mainstream newsrooms. Japanese academic discourses pivoting around journalism and multiculturalism have criticized their mainstream media for preserving a news frame confined to the national boundaries, which assumes the readership is ethnically homogeneous. Although these works offer valuable suggestions, roles of foreigners inside mass media including journalists have not gained much attention as a research interest in Japan. With increasing diversity of residents, however, a demand for minority participation in the media industry slowly emerges; considering effects of minority journalists as members of mainstream media may redeem an absence of approaching minorities as subjects.

Previous studies in America clarify that minority journalists have two natures - called ‘duality’; one engages in the universal professional norm of journalists such as objectivity, the other adopts a viewpoint as a minority in journalism. This study redefines this ‘duality’ as a structure of conflict between ‘professional identity’ and ‘ethnic identity’, and investigates compatibility of this structure for Japan by interviewing 10 Zainichi (ethnic Koreans) journalists in mainstream media, - one of the biggest minority groups in Japan.

As a result, predominance of ‘professional identity’ over ‘ethnic identity’ is observed in Zainichi case, so there is no conflict such as previous American studies indicate. This absence of conflict reveals that Zainichi journalists do not necessarily pursue ‘ethnic identity’ as their foremost mission, however utilizing this ‘ethnic identity’ facilitates accesses to various news sources. This is an advantage frequently expected of the Zainichi journalists by their superiors.