At the time of writing this article, the sitting president of Kosovo has been indicted on suspicion of war crimes during the Kosovo conflict in the former Yugoslavia, a presidential election is being held in Poland, and flooding has adversely affected various parts of Eastern Europe. There is always “news” coming out of Eastern Europe. But how much is this region actually covered in Japanese media? This article takes a closer look at reporting on Eastern Europe.

Campaign billboards for presidential candidates in Poland (Photo: MOs810/Wikimedia [CC BY-SA 4.0])

Historical background of Eastern Europe

To begin with, there is no unified definition of which countries are included in the region of Eastern Europe. Some limit Eastern Europe to former Soviet states located west of Russia, while others take a broader view. In this article, we define Eastern Europe as the countries included in the Eastern European group of United Nations member states. This spans from Russia in the east and north to the Czech Republic in the west, and to Albania, Armenia, and Azerbaijan in the south (※1）。

Until the end of the Cold War, many countries such as Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, and Georgia were not independent states but part of the Soviet Union. Other Eastern European countries—such as Romania, Hungary, and Poland—were independent states but were within the Soviet sphere of influence. An exception was the former Yugoslavia, which, despite being a socialist state, was not directly under Soviet influence.

As the Soviet Union weakened and the end of the Cold War approached, some Soviet republics demanded independence and large-scale demonstrations took place. As a result of these developments, along with events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1991 the Soviet Union was dissolved.

So how did Eastern European countries change after the Cold War? Most Eastern European countries that had operated planned economies introduced market economic systems. The industrial base, already weakened by the breakdown of the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence, collapsed, and poverty and inequality surged. In many countries, it took more than ten years to achieve economic recovery. Moreover, in 2004 Eastern Europe’s 8 countries (Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, and the three Baltic states ) joined the European Union (EU) by joining. Furthermore, in 2007 Bulgaria and Romania, in 2013 Croatia also joined the EU , and as a result, the economies and legal systems of Eastern European countries have been integrated with those of other EU member states. However, GDP-wise, Western European countries are wealthier than Eastern European countries, and many people, in search of a better life, became migrant workers or emigrated. In fact, 1990 to 2012 saw about20 million people migrate from Eastern Europe mainly to Western Europe and the United States. In addition, due to high emigration rates, birthrates have declined in Eastern Europe and problems of low birthrates and aging populations have arisen. For example, today Bulgaria is the country with the world’s fastest-shrinking population.

Even after the Cold War, various security issues arose in Eastern Europe. For example, the independence of former Soviet republics triggered armed conflicts in countries such as Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. In Russia’s Chechen Republic, the First Chechen War lasted from 1994 to 1996, and the Second Chechen War lasted from 1999 to 2009, as forces sought separation from Russia. In 1991, the breakup of Yugoslavia led to intense armed conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia following their declarations of independence, continuing until 1995. Furthermore, Kosovo also sought separation from Serbia, and the Kosovo War took place from 1998 to 1999, resulting in de facto independence due to military intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This conflict has led to ongoing tensions with Serbia, which still does not recognize that independence. In addition to Kosovo, unresolved territorial issues remain in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova. In 2014, following the Ukrainian revolution, Russia intervened in the Crimean Peninsula, which was subsequently annexed by Russia. As a result, a conflict in eastern Ukraine erupted and continues to this day.

A Ukrainian tank (Photo: Drop of Light/Shutterstock.com)

Since 2015, many refugees and migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere have headed for Western Europe, transiting through Eastern European countries. This has been one factor energizing right-wing political movements that take anti-immigrant positions in countries such as Hungary and Poland, affecting their relations with the EU. Including Russia, these countries have increasingly been characterized by strongman governments, drawing criticism.

Which Eastern European countries are covered and what is covered

So, based on actual data, how does the Japanese media cover Eastern Europe? Using data from Asahi Shimbun, we examined reporting on 23 Eastern European countries over 3 years (2017 to 2019) (※2). First, we calculated the character count by country (※3） and created the following ranking of coverage volume for each country. Russia (36%), Ukraine (26.1%), and Poland (7.9%) are the top 3 countries in coverage on Eastern Europe, accounting for 70% of the total combined. In contrast, 14 countries each accounted for 1% or less of coverage. Moreover, over the period analyzed, 10 countries had an average of less than 1 article per year. In addition, articles about Montenegro and Moldova were not reported even once from 2017 to 2019.

In this survey, we found a tendency for a single article to include several countries, particularly among the top 3 countries. For example, 42% of the articles that included Ukraine also included Russia. In those articles, the conflict in eastern Ukraine was a frequent topic, and Ukraine and Russia, which is involved in that conflict, were covered extensively.

Moreover, the countries appearing in the articles are not limited to those in Eastern Europe. In coverage related to Eastern Europe, some countries outside the region were reported more often than countries within Eastern Europe. In particular, the United States and Japan appeared more frequently than 21 of the countries in Eastern Europe. In terms of character count, the United States accounted for 8.6% of total coverage, with many articles about meetings between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin. Among the 81 articles on Ukraine, 26 included the United States, and most of those articles focused not on the situation in Ukraine but on reporting about the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. In 2019, President Trump was accused of breaking the law by pressuring the president of Ukraine to dig up damaging information about his political rival, which received major coverage in Europe and the United States. Among the articles about Russia (114), 33 also included the United States. Japan accounted for 4.8% of total coverage, with many articles about negotiations over the Northern Territories dispute between Japan and Russia, as well as reports on the Emperor’s visits to Hungary and Poland.

So what was the content of the reporting? The graph below shows the amount of coverage by topic related to Eastern Europe, expressed in character count (※4).

As can be seen from the graph, the proportion of articles related to politics is 59.0%, which is exceptionally high. In fact, 78% of articles about Russia, which ranks first, are political. For example, many articles concern the conflict in eastern Ukraine and meetings between President Putin and President Trump. After politics, the war/conflict category accounts for 11.0% of total coverage. The two most reported countries, Russia and Ukraine, particularly have many articles related to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Next, the incidents category accounts for 8.7% of the total, ranking 3rd, and many of those articles are about the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

Although sports coverage was excluded from this analysis, if included, it would account for about one quarter of all reporting on Eastern Europe. Much of this was coverage of the matches at the 2018 FIFA World Cup. In some countries, sports coverage exceeded all non-sports coverage such as politics, the economy, and incidents. For example, for Croatia, there were 15 sports-related articles, but excluding those left only 1 article.

Eastern European countries that are not covered

So, during the survey period from 2017 to 2019, what kinds of events in Eastern Europe went unreported in the Asahi Shimbun? Among many, let’s look at a few cases from countries in Eastern Europe.

Over these 3 years of the survey, Romania experienced major political turmoil. In 2017, new decrees were submitted to parliament to protect politicians and bureaucrats from anti-corruption prosecutions. In response, the public pushed back strongly, and from 2017 to 2019 about 40 protests were held. The largest of these was on February 5, 2017, with around 500,000 participants. As a result, the proposed decrees were withdrawn due to the protests, and the justice minister who submitted them resigned. In addition to these protests, corruption issues in Romania have drawn attention from the global media. Yet over these 3 years these events were never reported in the Asahi Shimbun. Also, in Moldova, in the 2019 elections no party was able to win an absolute majority, and subsequent negotiations failed to reach agreement on a coalition government. As a result, Moldova fell into a constitutional crisis. Furthermore, in 2019 in Montenegro, the passage of a controversial religion-related bill sparked large-scale protests, and as of 2020 the issue remains unresolved. Neither Moldova nor Montenegro was covered even once over the 3 years.

Anti-corruption protest in Romania (Mihai Petre/Wikimedia commons [CC BY-SA 4.0])

During the same period, various issues arose in the Balkans region of Eastern Europe as well; between Kosovo and Serbia, the unresolved 1998–1999 Kosovo conflict has left ongoing disputes over territory and military matters. For example, in 2018 in June, a proposed “land swap” was presented to the Serbian president that would make northern Kosovo, where many Serbs live, part of Serbia and southern Serbia, where many Albanians live, part of Kosovo. The proposal was rejected by Kosovo’s president, heightening political tension between the two countries. In December 2018, Kosovo also signaled plans to create an army, which was hotly debated between Kosovo and Serbia at a meeting of the UN Security Council. None of these developments were reported in the Asahi Shimbun from 2017 to 2019.

Not all unreported events were about political friction or conflict. For example, the Estonian government made various moves in e-governance, leading the world in digitizing government. Over the past few years, most government services have been digitized, and during the three years of this survey period there was further progress. The share of residents using the online Smart-ID increased from 10% to 35% . Furthermore, in 2017 Estonia announced it would open the world’s first data embassy in Luxembourg. Specifically, the data embassy stores copies of the most important classified data so that, even if the nation falls victim to a cyberattack, the information is backed up at the data embassy and will not be lost. Beyond e-government, there were other technological advances. For example, in 2019, in Estonia’s capital, operations began for a driverless public bus. The Asahi Shimbun reported on Estonia’s cyber defense and business digitization in two short articles, but did not report the developments mentioned above.

“E-Estonia” (EU2017EE Estonian Presidency/Wikimedia commons [CC BY 2.0])

As past GNV research comparing coverage volume shows, reporting on Eastern Europe is scarce, and there is a large gap in coverage compared to Western Europe. Even within reporting on Eastern Europe, there is a strong skew, and the image of “Eastern Europe” ends up being mainly “Russia” and “Ukraine.” Across Eastern European countries, a variety of events and phenomena are occurring—political confrontations between and within states, large-scale protests, and the development of e-government that could serve as a model. However, readers of the Asahi Shimbun are unable to learn about many of these. Should this be left as it is? Improvements in reporting on Eastern Europe are needed.

※1： Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, the Republic of Moldova, Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine.

※2： “聞蔵Ⅱビジュアル” was used; print: International section; publisher: [Tokyo] selected; period: 2017 to 2019 were the survey conditions. All articles focusing on Eastern European countries were selected, and the number of articles and characters was calculated. Sports articles were not included.

※3： If an article covered more than one country, the character count was divided according to the number of countries covered.

※4： If there were 2 categories, the character count was split into 2 parts.

Writer: Adriana Nicolaie

Graphics: Adriana Nicolaie, Yow Shuning

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