GNV has, since 2015, conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses of Japan’s international reporting, focusing on major mass media such as newspapers and television. In a previous article, we analyzed articles published in the morning editions of the 3 newspapers—Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, and Yomiuri Shimbun—from 2015 to 2024. These data are compiled on a special page within GNV titled “Reporting Data.”
This time we focus on one of those datasets, coverage volume by country (Note 1). Which countries have been covered, and how, over the past 10 years? We analyze this point in greater depth.
A newspaper reporting on events as one of the major media (Photo: Ned Snowman / Shutterstock.com)
目次
Coverage volume by country
First, let’s take a broad look at the geographic distribution of international reporting over the past 10 years. The figures below plot, on a world map, the number of characters devoted to each country in international coverage; the more coverage, the darker the color. Looking at this, the 10-year totals show some differences among Asahi, Mainichi, and Yomiuri, but their distributions are similar in trend.
Looking more closely at the combined coverage across the three papers, the most-covered country was the United States (25.2%), followed by China (12.5％), roughly half of the United States. Japan (7.5%) received about 60% as much coverage as China (Note 2). For the United States, China, and Japan, all three papers commonly ranked them among the top 3 countries covered over the decade. Reporting on these three countries accounts for roughly 45% of international coverage over the ten years. Rankings from fourth place onward vary somewhat by newspaper, but when looking at the share of total characters across the three papers combined, Russia (5.9%), South Korea (5.3%), North Korea (4.3%), and Ukraine (3.4%) follow in that order, as found.
These tendencies might seem reasonable if we consider Japan’s political and economic ties and the scale of human rights violations, including conflicts. However, the distribution cannot be explained by that alone. For example, Southeast Asia has deep political and economic ties with Japan and active people-to-people exchanges, yet the total coverage of the ten Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states (Note 3) amounts to just 4.6% of coverage over the decade. In terms of the scale of human rights violations, Yemen, where 18 million people faced hunger in the late 2010s and which was then considered the most severe humanitarian crisis; the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where at least several million people have been killed and even death toll surveys have ceased since 2007; and Sudan, said to be facing the largest humanitarian crisis ever recorded, received coverage shares of 0.19%, 0.06％, and 0.14%, respectively—figures that are hardly commensurate with the scale of the crises (Note 4).
Next, let’s look at monthly coverage totals across the three papers. Depending on that month’s events, the countries covered change, and we can see that coverage of Western European countries, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia sometimes grows substantially. Viewed monthly, the distribution may appear less skewed than over the full ten years. However, even by month, the United States, China, and Japan dominate the coverage, and regions such as Africa, Latin America, and South Asia still receive relatively little attention.
On average, the number of countries mentioned in a month by Asahi, Mainichi, and Yomiuri is 56 (Note 5). Yet the map above does not make it look as though that many countries are being covered. In fact, the number of countries that changed color even once over the decade on this map—meaning that in at least one month, there were 30,000 or more characters of combined coverage by the three papers—is only 39. Of the 254 countries (Note 1) included in this study, only 15.4% received that level of attention at least once, while the remaining 84.6%—215 countries—received no standout attention.
For these 215 countries that did not attract attention, their combined character count over the past ten years amounts to only 9.3% of the total, meaning that the remaining 90.7% of coverage is concentrated on just 15.4% (39 countries) of the world. This shows that even among countries mentioned in the newspapers, there is an extreme disparity in coverage volume, and Japan’s international reporting appears to focus particularly on a small subset of countries.
In short, the set of countries covered by Japan’s international reporting shows a major skew that cannot be explained solely by the depth of ties with Japan or the severity of issues. The figure below presents a more intuitive visualization of each country’s coverage over the decade. With coverage like this, is it not difficult to understand what is happening across the world as a whole?
Regional comparison of coverage by character count
Up to this point we have focused on country-by-country imbalances in Japan’s international reporting. Of course, differences in coverage between countries are natural. For example, events in more populous countries tend to be larger in scale than those in less populous countries. Trends in economically developed countries can affect more economies. And news organizations based in one country may pay greater attention to countries with which it has closer ties.
Therefore, to objectively grasp imbalances in international reporting, we now analyze from additional angles. Specifically, we look at countries with close ties to Japan and regional powers that influence global affairs, examining the coverage volumes for each.
Before looking at individual countries, let’s start by considering the average number of characters per country. Over the past 10 years, the average number of characters devoted to a single country in a month, across the 3 papers combined, is about 3,255. However, this average covers 254 countries, including small and less influential ones, so a simple mean like this is not realistic when considering the importance of events. Given that the number of countries mentioned in a month averages 56, if we assume an even distribution of characters across those countries, then the combined character count per country across the 3 papers would be 14,765.
With that in mind, let’s examine the average character counts for countries with close ties to Japan or that are regional powers. For countries historically and economically close to Japan—the United States, China, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and France—the counts are 208,114, 103,347, 44,229, 24,066, and 20,099, respectively. As for India, Indonesia, and Thailand, which have strong economic ties with Japan, the coverage volumes are 8,249, 5,080, and 7,560. In the Middle East, influential Iran and Turkey have 13,420 and 8,000. Looking at African regional powers—Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa—the figures are 3,243, 937, and 1,567. In Latin America, influential Brazil and Mexico stand at 5,384 and 1,866.
Lagos, the largest city of Nigeria—which has Africa’s largest population (Photo: Adedotun Ajibade / Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0] )
These figures show that the United States and China were exceptionally heavily covered. The Korean Peninsula and Western European countries also received relatively high coverage. By contrast, even for large, populous regional powers in Asia relatively close to Japan, such as India and Indonesia, coverage was low, suggesting that reporting is not necessarily proportional to a country’s size. Similarly, despite significant regional influence, countries in Africa and Latin America tend to receive limited attention.
Except for the United States and China, influential countries listed here tend to be covered in the range of a few thousand characters per month across the 3 papers combined. Considering the earlier “average character count for 56 countries,” 14,765, many regional powers do not even reach that level. This indicates that even among influential regional powers, coverage is concentrated in just a small subset of countries. In this way, the differences between countries in Japan’s international reporting reveal a skew that cannot be explained simply by the size or influence of the country.
Country-by-country coverage excluding Japan, China, and the United States
Our analysis so far makes clear that coverage is concentrated in a handful of countries. As noted, over the past 10 years, about 45% of Japan’s international reporting has been on the three countries of the United States, China, and Japan. This extreme concentration makes it difficult to grasp broader distributional trends from the map.
To address this, the following map excludes the United States, China, and Japan, where coverage was extremely concentrated. This reduces the extreme concentration to some extent. To improve readability, we adjusted the color scale so that on this map a country changes color when there are at least 10,000 characters per month across the 3 papers. Using this, we examine the geographic distribution of the remaining 55% of international reporting after excluding the top 3 countries.
Compared with the map that included the overwhelmingly covered top 3 countries, this map appears to show less regional skew. While coverage is understandably high for Russia, Western Europe, the Korean Peninsula, and the Middle East, we can also see that in some months certain countries in Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia attracted attention. Over the 10 years, the number of countries that changed color at least once on this map—that is, countries that received 10,000 or more characters in a month across the 3 papers—was 76 countries.
Over the 10 years—i.e., across 120 months—there were 42 months in which a single country was covered with 100,000 or more characters across the 3 papers. When one country receives over 100,000 characters in a month, it implies that significant events there drew particular attention from Japanese news organizations. To identify such countries, the table below lists, for each month, the countries with at least 100,000 characters of coverage.
This shows several tendencies among countries that received over 100,000 characters in a month. First, many countries appear repeatedly. The total number of instances of countries exceeding 100,000 characters in this table is 53, but the number of distinct countries is only 11. In other words, many countries appear multiple times. The most frequent is Russia, appearing 13 times. Only Greece and Myanmar appear just once. This indicates that countries exceeding 100,000 characters in a month are extremely limited among the 254 countries considered.
Regionally, the 11 countries with months over 100,000 characters comprise 5 in Europe; Israel and Palestine in the Middle East; and in Asia, South Korea, North Korea, Myanmar, and Afghanistan. Notably, there were none in Africa, Latin America, or Oceania with such volumes. Thus, when viewed through the lens of months exceeding 100,000 characters, the regional diversity suggested by the map weakens. Is it really the case that over the 10 years there were no events in these regions worthy of 100,000 characters of coverage?
We can also infer from the table that countries with months exceeding 100,000 characters often experienced conflict or military events. North Korea’s missile tests, the Russia–Ukraine war, and the Israel–Palestine conflict attracted major attention. However, as with Yemen and Sudan mentioned earlier, it is not necessarily the case that large-scale conflicts are covered.
As seen above, when we exclude the United States, China, and Japan, regional skew diminishes somewhat, and it appears that various countries were covered in certain months. However, there were still 178 countries that never changed color on this map at all; in other words, for 70.1% of countries, there was no month in the 120-month period with more than 10,000 characters of combined reporting by the 3 papers. And we must not forget that this analysis looks only at the 55% of international reporting after excluding the top 3 countries.
In Japan’s international reporting, roughly seven-tenths of the world’s countries receive little to no attention, and standout coverage over the 120 months is limited to just a dozen-odd countries in a few regions. Information derived from such reporting is likely to be skewed as a result.
Countries not being reported in Japan
So far we have looked at how much coverage Japan’s international reporting has given each country. From here, albeit selectively, we highlight major events that appear to merit coverage but received little to none in Japan.
In April 2019, Sudan’s authoritarian then-president Omar al-Bashir was ousted in a military coup, and a military government was established. In response, people staged sit-in demonstrations, which led to clashes with the military in June of the same year as authorities moved to disperse them, resulting in confrontations. During this period, widespread detentions, sexual violence, and killings occurred, with at least 120 people dead and hundreds missing. Furthermore, Sudan’s armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which had cooperated during the coup, have been combatants in the ongoing Sudan conflict since April 2023, precipitating a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented scale.
Looking at combined coverage across the 3 papers on Sudan, there was no month in 2019 exceeding 10,000 characters despite the large-scale clashes with over 100 deaths and a historic political upheaval. In April 2023, when the Sudan conflict erupted, coverage exceeded 40,000 characters, but much of it focused on the evacuation of Japanese nationals in Sudan, and once that stabilized, coverage fell to around 10,000 characters in May. Thereafter, despite the protracted conflict and worsening humanitarian conditions, there were no months exceeding 10,000 characters, and there were months with no coverage at all.
A refugee camp in western Sudan destroyed by the RSF in 2014 (Photo: Enough Project / Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])
Ethiopia also rarely draws attention, yet it has seen major events over the past 10 years. In April 2018, Abiy Ahmed became prime minister and brought significant changes to Ethiopia and neighboring countries. Domestically, he advanced democratic reforms, and in diplomacy he signed a peace agreement in June 2018 with Eritrea, which had been in confrontation since the border war from 1998 to 2000 that killed 80,000 people. Yet despite these changes, there was no month in 2018 in which Ethiopia exceeded 10,000 characters of coverage. In October 2019 it did exceed that, likely because Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize that year. While attention spurred by the Nobel Prize may be valuable, is it not a problem that major developments draw little coverage without such a trigger?
About a year after Abiy’s Nobel Prize, in November 2020 a war broke out between Ethiopia’s federal government and Tigray Region. The conflict grew more complex as armed groups across Ethiopia became involved and Eritrea intervened militarily. Although the war ended in November 2022, one estimate suggests that over the two years, 600,000 civilians died due to direct attacks, collapse of medical access, and famine. By comparison, estimated deaths in the Russia–Ukraine war, ongoing for more than 3 years since 2022, including combatants on both sides and Ukrainian civilians, exceed 320,000. In light of this, the two-year death toll in Ethiopia is truly enormous.
Looking at Ethiopia’s coverage during this period, the month the war began—November 2020—saw 17,481 characters and some attention, but no subsequent month exceeded 10,000 characters, and even in November 2022 when a peace agreement was signed, the coverage was just 1,441 characters. This level of reporting is hard to regard as commensurate with the scale of human rights violations.
Burkina Faso is another country that rarely draws attention. According to the Institute for Economics & Peace report, 1,532 people were killed by terrorism there in 2024, making it, for the second consecutive year, the country most affected by terrorism worldwide. This means one-fifth of terrorism deaths globally in 2024 occurred in this country. Given that its rank in 2014 was 110, the change appears to have been rapid. However, in the past 10 years Burkina Faso has never exceeded 10,000 characters of coverage, indicating extremely low attention.
Haiti also tends to be overlooked, despite the severity of the situation. Since the assassination of the president in July 2021, the government has effectively collapsed, and the capital Port-au-Prince is under the control of multiple armed groups commonly referred to as gangs—a situation that persists. In 2024, violence reportedly left more than 5,600 people dead, with no end in sight. Looking at coverage, only July 2021—when the president was assassinated—saw 10,151 characters; since then, there has been no notable attention.
Haiti, where public security has deteriorated severely since 2021 (Photo: Pan American Health Organization PAHO / Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])
There are also countries in Southeast Asia that draw extremely little attention. Laos, where numerous unexploded ordnance remain, already faced fragile economic conditions and a closed political system; compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, global inflation, and currency depreciation, it plunged into a severe economic crisis in 2022. The result has been acute inflation and widening inequality. The general government gross debt (Note 6) of Laos has exceeded 100% of GDP since 2022. Added to this, worsening poverty and under-resourced law enforcement, along with drug syndicates emboldened by instability in Myanmar, have led to widespread methamphetamine proliferation in Laos, reportedly making drugs easier to obtain than necessities like food. Despite such severe economic and social crises, Laos has not exceeded 10,000 characters of coverage in any month over the past 10 years.
As we have seen, many countries face major problems yet receive little to no attention in Japan’s international reporting. The examples above are just a few; many more issues exist worldwide. News organizations are called upon to shine a light on these hidden problems and spur improvement.
A first step toward a better world
This article analyzed Japan’s international reporting from the perspective of coverage volume by country. We found that Japanese reporting concentrates on a small number of countries and addresses only a fraction of what is happening around the world. In countries that go unreported, serious problems occur without being widely known, and poverty, conflict, and human rights violations proceed without drawing attention.
There is a saying that “journalism is the first rough draft of history.” This metaphor expresses the relationship between history and reporting. History is built up methodically over time by historians who gather and study information about the past. Reporting, by contrast, is what first brings events to public awareness; through it, people recognize what has happened and decide what deserves attention. Conversely, events that go unreported may never draw public attention—or even be recognized—and may be forgotten without becoming part of history.
An exhibit from the former Newseum in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Benjamas Boonyarit / Flickr [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0])
Of course, reporting on influential countries is essential to understanding the world, and it is not wrong to focus on them. But isn’t it also necessary to draw attention to the suffering caused by large-scale armed conflicts and human rights abuses? Without such focus, people may not even notice the problems actually occurring, allowing immense human rights violations to unfold out of sight. More troubling still is the possibility that, embedded within social structures of discrimination, inequality, and exploitation, we may unknowingly become indirect perpetrators.
To solve problems, we must first recognize them. For people to recognize problems, reporting with fewer biases is required.
※1 In this article, some places that are not necessarily regarded as countries are treated as “countries” for convenience. The list of 254 countries surveyed this time is here.
※2 When GNV judged an article to be international reporting and it included Japan, Japan was counted. For example, for an article on Japan–U.S. relations, the article itself is counted as international reporting, and the related countries are treated as Japan and the United States.
※3 As of April 2025, ASEAN member states are the 10 countries of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
※4 For reference, the combined coverage of Israel and Palestine is 11％; Ukraine and Russia is 9.31%; and Syria is 1.34%.
※5 The average number of countries reported per month by Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, and Yomiuri Shimbun is 53, 56, and 59, respectively.
※6 General government gross debt is the total of a government’s outstanding liabilities.
Writer/Graphics: Seita Morimoto
Data: Successive GNV members involved in data entry
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