Media Law and Ethics

In Japan, Act on Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, which is sort of media law, is the most controversial issue and the most important thing for understanding it. Act on Protection of Specially Designated Secrets is the low that Japanese government enacted to protect some special information that they do not want outside of Japan to see, and to protect the country. In addition, this law is categorized by 4 departments such as defense, diplomacy, Prevention of Specified Harmful Activities and Prevention of Terrorist Activities. However, this law called SDS is ambiguous about how much range is legal and illegal and what they are doing inside of government so Japanese citizens are worried about being infringed on their rights to know and some of them concerned that the law can be influence content in Japanese media because media, especially journalists and reporters might lose their freedom of the press. If they lost it, who could get the information of the country. No one can even figure out what is going on the country. Which means, the government can monopolize the information and it might be dictatorship by taking their freedom of the press up from them even to protect the special information of the country. Additionally, people were demonstrating to try to stop passing this bill. So I would say that SDS is not good law if we see individual, I mean, for citizens. Japanese government should not maintain this law, and has to change the details of it for not only the country but also for the each citizens who are living there.

Overview of Act on Protection of Specially Designated Secrets