I’ve noticed a lot of NHK news articles start with one paragraph summary of the news, then follow it up with one or two more paragraphs basically saying the exact same thing. They are not even paraphrasing most of the time; they literally say the same thing using the same verbs again, but just change around sentence structure a little bit.
Anyone living in Japan, or connections to Japanese people, have any insight into why this is? Is it just NHK’s style, or do other news outlets do something similar?
Example below on the recent trade war news between my country and our favourite neighbours. The two areas circled in red are what I’m referring to.
I usually check stuff from Yahoo news, and they don’t have that style (or I just didn’t notice).
That being said, they are more a news aggregator than a news outlet, so, I guess it depends on the stuff they are using…
It’s possible that they produce one version of the news which is used in different ways. So for example, at the start of a news program the announcer might read something akin to the first paragraph, which gives the overall summary. Then later on they might give the longer version. I sometimes watch NHK morning news (via the website of an Australian TV channel) and I’ve noticed quite a lot of repetition there too. But this is a bonus for me as a learner.
