NHK, Japan’s national public broadcaster, has just launched an ambitious project to hold a worldwide debate on global issues. The first episode of “Project Wisdom” will be aired on April 29 and will incorporate views expressed by both experts and members of the public on the project’s Web site. The topic is “Hope for African Children!” highlighting areas such as child mortality rates, malnutrition, literacy levels and AIDS orphans, and visitors to the Web site are encouraged to both view the opinions of others around the world and pitch into the debate themselves.
The experts for the program have been given the rather clunky moniker “Wisdoms,” and the Web site states they are “leaders with an influence across the world, social entrepreneurs dedicated to addressing serious problems worldwide . . . ” People such as Vijay Mahajan, professor at University of Texas in Austin and Silvanus A.B. Malaho, a philanthropist and executive director of Kenya Volunteer Development Services.
While all of this seems to be fulfilling NHK’s goal of increasing the sense of global community in Japan while at the same time engaging people in other countries, the fact that there has been as yet (excepting this short article) been no coverage by foreign media of the project throws doubt on whether the corporation can truly fulfill its second goal. While the English version of the Web site appears to solicit opinions from foreigners, I have to wonder how many non-Japanese speakers will stumble across the site.