Weather forecasts and other details provided by the Japan Meteorological Agency on its website are essential information necessary for disaster prevention. The confidence of users must not be impaired by the method of display.
The JMA had begun posting commercial advertisements on its website for a fee, but was forced to suspend them about 20 hours later. This is because about 100 ads, including ads for online shopping businesses and hair care products that could be misleading, have been posted on the site.
Last year, the website had about 7.9 billion views. At times such as when a typhoon approaches, the number of views sometimes exceeds 50 million a day. Advertising was intended to cover part of the 240 million yen it costs the JMA annually to operate the website.
The trouble stems from the adoption of "programmatic advertising," which changes the ad according to the viewer's internet search history and other factors.
As this method requires connection to external servers, it has also been pointed out that malicious third parties can send unauthorized programs or tamper with browsers.
If an ad appears on the website of an administrative organ, some people may think that even a problematic company is trustworthy.
The JMA had made a rule that advertisements that do not meet its standards for carrying ads would be automatically excluded, yet it failed to prevent inappropriate ads from being displayed.
In response to the latest case, it is natural that the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry, which has jurisdiction over the JMA, instructed the agency to take drastic measures, including changing the way advertisements are posted on the website.
The JMA provides information critical to people's lives, such as on typhoons, earthquakes and tsunami. Users becoming distrustful of the website and hesitating to browse the content must be avoided as much as possible.
Unless effective preventive measures can be worked out, one option could be to stop the use of programmatic advertising, or to stop carrying advertisements themselves.
Providing accurate weather information is the JMA's basic task. It is reasonable that the necessary budget for that purpose should be covered by taxes.
Among central government ministries and agencies, only the Foreign Ministry is said to have posted advertisements on its website, and only for a short period of time. Behind the JMA's unusual decision to place ads on its website is the nation's severe fiscal condition.
The JMA's budget for this fiscal year is 59.4 billion yen, down about 10% from 20 years ago. The agency said that it would reduce the burden on the public by taking advantage of the fact that its website has many viewers. However, aren't there other wasteful things in the agency that could be reviewed to curtail expenses?
The importance of websites of government ministries and agencies as a means of disseminating information to the public has been increasing, and more reliability is required than ever before. Taking the latest case as a lesson, the government needs to reconsider how advertisments should be carried on its sites.
-- The original Japanese article appeared in The Yomiuri Shimbun on Sept. 26, 2020
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
