Shal­iza?Has­sanali

It took Shinichi Take­da of the Ko­hoku Shim­po Pub­li­ca­tion Com­pa­ny in Japan a lot of courage to ad­mit that its Sendai-based news­pa­per had failed to ed­u­cate its read­ers about dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness.

It's this fail­ure that has Take­da liv­ing with re­grets to this day.

Had this been done, Take­da be­lieves few­er lives would have been lost when the March 11, 2011 earth­quake and tsuna­mi struck the To­hoku re­gion east of Tokyo, which left a string of cities in ru­ins. The dis­as­ter claimed 20,000 lives, among them 27 peo­ple who had worked for the Ko­hoku Shim­po pa­per. Up to to­day, 2,500 peo­ple are still miss­ing, and about 140,000 peo­ple still live in tem­po­rary shel­ters in Japan.

Take­da is head of the dis­as­ter risk re­duc­tion-ed­u­ca­tion sec­tion of his firm.

Five and a half years af­ter the earth­quake and tsuna­mi, Take­da said that while some peo­ple are still try­ing to piece to­geth­er their lives, oth­ers still live in grief, sad­ness and de­spair.

Take­da briefed five jour­nal­ists from the Caribbean and South Pa­cif­ic on the im­por­tant role the me­dia need to play in ed­u­cat­ing read­ers about dis­as­ter pre­ven­tion.

Take­da not­ed that some ed­i­tors and pub­lish­ers con­tin­ue to ig­nore their pub­lic re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to dis­sem­i­nate life-sav­ing in­for­ma­tion, and he urged these peo­ple to get their act to­geth­er and not wait un­til it is too late.

"It is too late to take ac­tion af­ter the fact. It is a great pain to see your read­ers–lo­cal peo­ple–lose their lives to a dis­as­ter. I still, even as of to­day, re­gret this. I had to see read­ers lose their lives. The news­pa­per did not do enough to en­light­en and ed­u­cate peo­ple. I don't want this to hap­pen again. Lives could have been saved if we were more in­to dis­as­ter-pre­vent­ing ed­u­ca­tion for the peo­ple," Take­da said, speak­ing at his com­pa­ny's head of­fice in Sendai.

With a staff of 450 em­ploy­ees, Shim­po Pub­lish­ing has the largest cir­cu­la­tion of any dai­ly news­pa­per in Sendai.

In the morn­ing, the com­pa­ny dis­trib­utes 450,000 news­pa­pers, while the evening pa­per pub­lish­es 70,000 copies.

Take­da re­called that two months af­ter the tragedy had struck, res­i­dents liv­ing in tem­po­rary shel­ters were asked by the Ko­hoku Sim­po, in a ques­tion­naire, if its ar­ti­cles had ed­u­cat­ed and helped them to pre­pare for a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter. Sev­en­ty-two per cent of re­spon­dents said the pa­per's sto­ries had not been help­ful. That was when the com­pa­ny re­alised that it had failed in its pub­lic du­ty.

Re­al­is­ing where they had gone wrong, in 2011, the Ko­hoku Shim­po took the ini­tia­tive to hold sem­i­nars for neigh­bour­hood as­so­ci­a­tions, schools, com­pa­nies and its read­ers to re­duce the risk as­so­ci­at­ed with nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and to dis­sem­i­nate in­for­ma­tion to help peo­ple pro­tect their lives. Over 60 or­gan­i­sa­tions and 120 peo­ple were in­volved.

"These work­shops served as a won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to share their in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence of the dis­as­ter. There was not much op­por­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to share what kind of ac­tion they took, or what kind of dan­ger they faced, at the time of the dis­as­ter, or even af­ter. Peo­ple need to be giv­en a chance to speak. I think lo­cal news­pa­pers are best suit­ed for this kind of func­tion in so­ci­ety."

In ad­di­tion, every month the Ko­hoku Shim­po now or­gan­is­es a round-ta­ble meet­ing with uni­ver­si­ties, cor­po­rate bod­ies and me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tions to share in­for­ma­tion, ideas and dis­cuss dis­as­ter re­duc­tion risks, which the pa­per pub­lish­es.

"Every year we spend five mil­lion yen (TT$318,000) on these work­shop ses­sions with the hope of get­ting the re­newed con­fi­dence of our read­ers," Take­da said.

Take­da said to­day, one out of four of its read­ers now feel the pa­per's items on dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness are use­ful.

The com­pa­ny has been able to re­lo­cate sur­vivors to a safer evac­u­a­tion point. It has al­so cre­at­ed a haz­ard map which pin­points all the build­ings that are un­safe to en­ter, and those which do not keep com­mu­ni­ties iso­lat­ed.

Hav­ing lost two of­fices as a re­sult of the tsuna­mi, with its main of­fice re­ceiv­ing some dam­age, Take­da said while it was im­por­tant to re­port on the dis­as­ter, the most im­por­tant as­pect was to raise aware­ness among the peo­ple.

Take­da be­lieves there is no dif­fer­ence in re­port­ing dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness or pub­lish­ing ar­ti­cles on health, en­vi­ron­ment, con­flict or war.

"They all have the same im­por­tance. News­pa­pers can take ini­tia­tives for this dis­as­ter pre­ven­tion ed­u­ca­tion. Just re­port­ing how bad the sit­u­a­tion is, is not good enough. It's im­por­tant to al­so in­clude pos­i­tive mes­sages to en­cour­age and raise peo­ple's hopes af­ter a dis­as­ter."