More than nine decades old, the Pacific Citizen is an award-winning Asian Pacific American semi-monthly national newspaper.
Published by the JACL the nation’s oldest and largest APA civil rights organization, the Pacific Citizen is committed to delivering the most incisive coverage of important APA stories that are often ignored by other media outlets.
Since September 1929, the print edition of the Pacific Citizen has been the leading national newspaper for the APA community. Originally called the Nikkei Shimin (Japanese American Citizen), the San Francisco-based newspaper was a lifeline for the Japanese American community.
At the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent unjust internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, the Pacific Citizen was moved to Salt Lake City, Utah where editor Larry Tajiri was hired to continue publishing a weekly newspaper to keep the fragmented community informed. After WWII, the Pacific Citizen returned to the West Coast in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo where the newspaper’s operations is still currently based.
Today, the Pacific Citizen continues to serve the community with its focus on in-depth investigations, entertainment, sports, and late-breaking stories.
The Pacific Citizen engages in fact-based, fair, objective, truthful and accurate reporting of news and strives to meet those aforementioned standards. Should we fail to do so and should a factual error be made, we also will strive to correct the record.
Should a demonstrable error be made in our news reporting, send an email to us at pc@pacificcitizen.org detailing the date of the issue, the article’s headline and an explanation of what is believed to be in error. Our staff will examine this and if it is determined that an error was made, we will publish a correction in an upcoming issue.
The Pacific Citizen practices ethical journalism, using the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics as it model. (It can be found in its entirety at: spj.org/spj-code-of-ethics)
A summarized version of the SPJ’s Code of Ethics that Pacific Citizen abides by follows.
Seek Truth and Report It: Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
Minimize Harm: Ethical journalism treats sources, subjects, colleagues and members of the public as human beings deserving of respect.
Act Independently: The highest and primary obligation of ethical journalism is to serve the public.
Be Accountable and Transparent: Ethical journalism means taking responsibility for one’s work and explaining one’s decisions to the public.
Printed copies of the Pacific Citizen will include:
Archived copies of the Pacific Citizen will be made available here one month after being published in print.
