Personal experience with media coverage of 3.11

At the day the disaster hit Japan I was on vacation in Germany. It was early morning when my mum called me and told me about the earthquake.

When I am in Germany, I get my information basically through radio and when I am in Japan I podcast a German news show. I use other sources sporadically without particularly looking for it. E.g. when I open my mail program it suggests me some online newspaper headlines and sometimes one grabs my attention.

What changed after 3.11 was that I would watch television a lot. Basically NTV Germany, which is a all-day new program, and when the topic became a little less popular I would switch to CNN and BBC.

When I returned to Japan I found myself lacking information because I don't have a television and I didn't feel enough informed by most international online newspapers. Japanese newspapers were out of range for me since my Japanese skills are not good enough to read articles without a lot of effort. One more problem is that I spend most time of my day outside. So I wanted something I can use for my iPhone and I actually found that NHK World has an app which allows you to certain programs in a live stream. The news are in English and cover Japanese matters but also important international news and the newslines are basically once an hour. I would strongly recommend to get it if you are in a similar situation.

As for the reliability... I wouldn't favor a certain media. I think there are newspapers which try to stay neutral and simply inform people but of course they are some others who just want to sell and dramatize the situation because obviously drama sells best. But this was always like this, not just for 3.11. And of course this applies to all media... there are those and others. What I found really bad was that the information coverage was not sufficient. The serious media wanted to report but there were not many news every day and the not serious media would just make something up to fill the gap because people were really worried and willing to listen.

I liked the use of facebook, twitter etc to easily connect with the people you are worried about and with a status update you can get a lot of people at once but I don't consider it as serious source of information. It's similar to Wikipedia. You can get a first idea of something but the proper research I prefer to do in the library...