YOSHIO MURAKAMI Nominated by: Anthony Rowley Seconded by: Kazuo Abiko

Candidate for Director-at-Large

Yoshio Murakami

When I think about it, I have enjoyed my quarter-century membership of the FCCJ, thanks to the hard work of those members who have been laboriously supporting the Club "backstage." The Club has offered interesting and useful press conferences, events and symposiums, as well as good food and drinks. All have undoubtedly enriched my journalistic life.

During the past year, I happened to chair the tentatively created Grievance Panel. For the first time, I had a chance to experience - albeit a trifle part of it - what it is like to bolster the Club operations. I also realized there are problems that need to be solved for the betterment of FCCJ activities.

I believe it is time that I should try to offer what I can and contribute to the FCCJ in return for all the benefits I have received.

My overseas participation may be useful in promoting high professional standards among journalists in Tokyo. I also experienced being a member of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand while I was Bangkok bureau-chief, and was twice a member of the National Press Club of Washington, D.C., when I was a correspondent covering the White House, and later when assigned as Asahi's American bureau-chief.

Those clubs have the same membership features as the FCCJ: multi-cultural, in terms of their balance of American, European, Middle-Eastern, Asian and other journalists. In fact, such a feature is a strength to make the Club attractive for both public- and private-sector officials, and to help them disseminate their information, which the Club could take advantage of in terms of strengthening the Club's status.

If elected, I would like to promote a free and open atmosphere of the Club internally, further advance professional journalism, and do my best to promote the Club's status outwardly just as Japan's media world seems finally to be going through a radical change.