TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/112789/11278900.074

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.5 KB | 108 lines

                                                                                PRESS, Page 79

Yellow-Peril Journalism


Is latent racism coloring business coverage of Japan?

By Ellis Cose


    "Under present conditions we are virtually at the mercy of
the Japanese," editorialized the Los Angeles Times. The
Sacramento Bee, equally indignant, warned of a planned Japanese
"invasion of industrial fields." And in a spirited appearance
before a congressional committee, the Bee's publisher argued for
"protective measures." The Japanese, he fumed, were after
nothing less than "control of the country . . . through economic
competition."

    Those xenophobic outbursts were not made in 1989 but in
1920, during a time of "yellow peril" panic over Japanese
immigration to the U.S. But they are not much different from the
alarmed press comments that are now greeting Japan's continuing
economic ventures. When the Sony Corp. announced in September
that it would buy Columbia Pictures Entertainment, for example,
Newsweek called the deal "the biggest advance so far in a
Japanese invasion of Hollywood." An entertainment-industry
executive quoted by the Washington Post thought the acquisition
might be "bad for America," as did an economist who saw "a
potential for propaganda."

    Mitsubishi Estate Co.'s purchase of controlling interest in
the Rockefeller Group last month set off even more worrisome
reports. JAPANESE BUY HEART OF N.Y., declared the Dallas Times
Herald. "The roll call of all-American icons falling into
foreigners' hands added a new name yesterday," reported
Newsday. "When the whole house is being sold off, it doesn't
matter much that a cherished heirloom goes as well," sobbed the
San Jose Mercury News. The Sacramento Bee carried a photo of
"delighted" Japanese tourists gazing at the property now
controlled by "their countrymen."

    The less than subliminal message is that Japan Inc. is
buying up America, a point underscored by the ubiquity of
headlines portraying Japan -- as distinguished from Japanese
individuals or companies -- snapping up American treasures.
Similar coverage greeted OPEC in the 1970s, when Arab oil sheiks
seemed ready to slap down their petrodollars and pick up America
piece by piece. Yet even the most alarmist press scenarios of
that era did not envision oil merchants daring to seize the home
of the nation's Christmas tree.

    Peter G. Peterson, an American involved in the
Sony-Columbia deal, wondered why Sony's acquisition was so
controversial, while an Australian firm's attempted takeover of
MGM/UA "was mainly treated by the media as a minor business news
item." Part of the answer, he suggested in the Wall Street
Journal, is a "media pandering to American xenophobia and latent
racism." Sony chairman Akio Morita, noting the U.S. Government's
World War II internment of Japanese Americans, surmised that
Americans still see the Japanese as "strangers."

    Peterson and Morita have a point. When Australian Rupert
Murdoch was taking substantial control of major American media
properties (including Metromedia Inc. and 20th Century Fox),
little was written about the dangers of media manipulation from
Down Under. Reportage focused less on the fact that the predator
was Australian (Murdoch has since acquired American citizenship)
than that he was Murdoch. Nor did warnings sound when Canada's
Thomson Newspapers acquired more than 100 papers in the U.S.

    Reporting on Japanese investment has been peculiar for
several reasons. One is that Japanese corporations are less open
to American governance than American companies are to Japanese
control. Also, Japan has been less than effusive in welcoming
U.S. goods. Then too, no U.S. bureaucracy compares with Japan's
Ministry for International Trade and Industry, an entity whose
principal mission, some commentators believe, is to plot Japan's
economic domination of the world.

    Perhaps most troubling is that Japanese direct investment
in the U.S. is not only three times America's investment in
Japan but is also growing at a remarkable pace. According to
figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of
Economic Analysis, Japan's direct investment (ownership of at
least 10% of any one firm) in the U.S. stood at $53 billion in
1988, a 52% increase since 1987. Even so, Japanese direct
investment was only one-fourth that of all Europe, about half
that of Great Britain and roughly equal to that of the
Netherlands. Nor was it any more one-sided than that of the
Dutch. Neither Japan nor any other country imminently threatens
to gain economic control over the U.S., whose nonbank
multinational corporations have assets totaling well over $5
trillion.

    Dismaying though the financial trends concerning Japan may
be, economics alone cannot explain the current media attitude
any more than the immigration levels of the early 1900s could
explain the Nippon hysteria of those years. But modern-day Japan
is hardly a suitable candidate for press pity. American
reporters have a duty to be tough minded in their exploration
of Japanese business practices. Yet publications have all too
frequently reached for easy headlines and analyses that evoke
some of the worse aspects of the yellow-peril era. That is
unfortunate. For, to the extent that coverage of Japanese
business is reduced to the 1989 equivalent of "Japanese plan
invasion of industrial fields," journalism will be that much
more diminished and readers that much less informed.