1 Disaster Reporting across Boundaries PSM's role in times of disasters from a survey on foreign residents in Japan Takanobu TANAKA

Public Service Media [PSM] institutions, which are run by public funds, are by nature domestic in grounding and in practice and have been mandated to serve its people within the national boundaries who pay the fees or the taxes to support the activities of PSM. The BBC's job is "to defend the interests of license fee payers because "[l]icense fee payers are the BBC's shareholders " (Department for Culture, Media and Sport 2006; 46). This has been true to the disaster reporting of Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK).As one of the core missions of NHK, the sole public broadcaster of Japan, disaster reporting has its objective "to protect the lives and property of the (Japanese) nationals". For that purpose, NHK has devoted its resources to provide accurate and prompt disaster information to the public (Tanaka & Sato 2014). However in contemporary globalized societies, population movements and migration are unprecedentedly active around the world and Japan is no exception. The foreign residents in Japan have been increasing and also the number of foreign tourists visiting Japan exceeded record 10 million in 2013. Furthermore, in this interconnected world, the direct and indirect influences of disaster spread across boundaries. Following the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2012, breaking news of the disaster was reported by a foreign media to all over the world just five minutes after the quake struck Tohoku region and the media churned out extensive reports on the disaster not only in Japan but globally. This paper focuses mainly on providing disaster-related information to foreigners in Japan. McClean (2014) states that the ubiquitous characteristics of cultural diversity, immigration and refugee settlement in the world are "far from universally supported or understood (McClean:245) " The same can be said with the disaster reporting concerning Foreigners in Japan. Even though NHK received high praise about its 3/11 disaster coverage in 2011 both domestically an