Comments on: Bagel head trend is a big distortion

By: JTC

JTC — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:28:45 +0000

@Rebecca Milner

Thanks for taking time to respond to this reader’s comment and for preserving the punctuation! That’s journalism at its best in my book. I wish more media outlets, Eastern and Western, would take note and get on the same page.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 22:49:25 +0000

@Rebecca Milner

Yes, you hit the nail exactly on the head! A question mark is even more insidious in this case.

By: Rebecca Milner

Rebecca Milner — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 22:13:20 +0000

Thank you for your comments. I shouldn’t have singled out HuffPo (as it wasn’t the worst offender), and I’ve amended the story to acknowledge the question mark. Still, if you can’t judge an article by its headline, then what function does a headline serve? And I don’t think the National Geographic clip suggests at all that this *could* be a trend, so even asking if it could be (as the HuffPo headline does), in my opinion, is grossly misleading.

By: Eugen

Eugen — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 17:17:21 +0000

I have to disagree with JTC. The question mark in the title of the Huff Post piece seems to be raising the question: could this be the new trend in body modification? The treatment in non-Japanese media elsewhere (I even saw an article in the Bangkok Post) gives the impression this might catch on outside of Japan and should be discussed as something controversial. So, I think Japan Pulse got it right. It’s a matter of journalists trying to create a story where there isn’t really much of one.

By: Gio Makyo

Gio Makyo — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 10:46:22 +0000

“if you say something on the Internet about Japan, people tend to believe it.”

Not just about Japan…

By: JTC

JTC — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 01:03:26 +0000

This article really doesn’t say anything all that different from the Huff Post piece that it criticizes (and misquotes – punctuation matters, omitting the question mark turns the HP headline into a statement of fact that it never was). It even includes the exact same link to the “excellent interview in Vice” that originally appeared in the Huff Post article. If you read the Huff Post article beyond the headline, it says the injections are “part of the Japanese “body modification” art scene” and nothing more. Even the word “trend” itself is surrounded by quotation marks to indicate that it is not a trend.

To quote the MediaBugs post cited in a previous comment, “The Japan Pulse article accuses Huffington Post and other media outlets of taking the Nat Geo story at face value and misguiding its readers. You have to dig deep if you want to get to the heart of any story. You can’t judge a book by its cover and you can’t judge a news article by its headline either which is unfortunately exactly what Japan Pulse has done.”

By: Gary B

Gary B — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 14:12:49 +0000

Love LaCarmina.. she’s amazing

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 09:01:55 +0000

Writing about trends that don’t really exist in Japan is the real trend.

By: Cupcake

Cupcake — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 07:21:36 +0000

There is an interesting pro and con discussion about this post on the media monitoring site, MediaBugs (http://mediabugs.org/bugs/big-hole-in-bagel-head-story-).

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 03:32:02 +0000

Finally, some sanity restored. What a joke. Underground movements and subcultures are fascinating but often precisely because they are *not* mainstream. But any kind of lazy labelling of this as a “trend” is not only naive, it’s disrespectful to original pioneers.

Still, if it had been me, I would have steered way clear of a channel like National Geographic in the first place and not put my reputation (and network) on the line. Remember the way they screwed over Jake Adelstein recently with their Yakuza documentary?

I wonder if this happens in other places other than Japan?