Japan: Traditional News - Global Ratings

I thout it would be interesting to compare the blog post on global ratings with that of a traditional media. The Yomiuri Daily published an article, "Global poll: Japan has most positive influence in world" on the topic two days before the post by the blog. The article starts off with some basic background information on who conducted the survey (BBC and Yomiuri Daily among others), the number of surveyed countries (34), time period of survey (Oct. - Jan.), and the facts behind the title (56% positive ratings vs. 21% negative ratings.)Then the article proceeded to list the ratings of some of the most positive and negative images of other countries. For instance, Germany came in second to Japan, then the EU with 52% positive ratings, followed by Britain and France at 50%. The country with the most negative ratings was Iran with 54%, followed by Israel at 52% and Pakistan at 50%. North Korea also had fairly negative ratings at 45% and the US had only 35% positive ratings compared to 47% negative. The article finishes off with the data on who though most positively and negatively about Japan, ending with the Japanese's own view of their country.

Note that the this newspaper is the conservative news paper of Japan, thus it makes sense that it would follow the surveys and rankings in favor of Japan as well as focus on Japan even in its so-called international news. However, it is actually fairly neutral in its reporting, a lot more so than the blog. The article lists both positive and negative ratings, while the blog focuses mainly on the negative. Another interesting fact is that the middle east is where most of the negative ratings are focused on and the most positive ratings go to Japan, Germany, and the West. Obviously, Japan and Germany have come a long way in the past half century. Framing wise, the blog had a lot more bias, while the newspaper follows more of a reporting approach.