A funny thing happened on the way to jail for the 19-year-old boy who was arrested Mar. 3 for allegedly cheating on a Kyoto University entrance exam: The media suddenly became all reflective of its coverage and sympathetic of his situation. Some may see this turnaround as a defensive reaction to the public criticism of the press frenzy over the case. Cheating on tests is a problem as old as education, and many of the complaints weren't really about the quality of the coverage but rather about its lack of perspective. Neuroscientist and media pundit Kenichiro Mogi called Asahi Shimbun "rubbish" for its treatment of the story, but mainly because Japan's newspaper of record pushed aside more momentous news, like the crisis in Libya.
Nevertheless, Asahi's coverage has been instructive. In an essay published by the paper, 54-year-old critic Takashi Odajima discussed the perception gap that separates the mainstream press from the object of its scrutiny. The "existing media," according to Odajima, is still somewhat in awe of technology, since most editors grew up in a pre-Internet world. To them the web and IT devices remain "unknown and frightening," and the young man who used such tools to cheat on a university entrance exam had irresistible "news value." In the days leading up to the arrest, reporters tried to fathom how the boy could solicit answers to test questions on a popular website while he was sitting for the test. There was something super-human about the skills involved: How fast can you type on a cellphone? Did he use special text-capture software? Why didn't any of the proctors notice? The kid came across as an evil genius.
After he was caught and found to be a scared young man who despaired of not being able to get into Kyoto University — a public institution that his mother could afford — the media realized what was going on. To the boy, the Internet is the world he lives in, not a mysterious matrix behind a computer screen. His understanding of life is based on the shugochi (collective knowledge) represented by the Net. Pre-Internet people like those who control the media still look upon knowledge as something unique to each individual, while post-Internet people see it as something that's out there, something you "access" as the need arises.