Nov 2 2026 How to make the case for provenance: NHK’s Kaori Iida reports from Tokyo

We reported on the Media Provenance Summit Tokyo soon after it took place on October 13th. Now Kaori Iida, deputy director of NHK’s News Department, has written her own account for the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU). It is well worth reading, even if you were in the room on the day.

Her article, “Glass to Glass – Building trust with C2PA”, adds some important points that were not covered in our report. The first is a closer look at NHK’s work, including a prototype “glass-to-glass” system from its Science & Technology Research Laboratories. The aim is to preserve provenance information all the way from the camera lens to the viewer’s screen. But Ms Iida’s message is pragmatic: broadcasters need not wait for the whole chain to be ready, and can start by signing content when they publish it.

The second is an account of the session that Ms Iida moderated with the BBC, Suspilne, Mediacorp and IPTC, which aimed to help attendees persuade their bosses to take provenance seriously. Laura Ellis of the BBC described fake content that used the BBC’s logo and voices resembling those of its journalists. Dmytro Khilchenko of Suspilne warned broadcasters not to assume that a familiar name will keep their journalism recognisable online. And Willy Tan of Mediacorp pointed out that “technology cannot solve the question of ‘is it true?’” C2PA can provide evidence of where content came from, but establishing the truth still takes editorial judgement.

Iida summarised Tan’s comments as saying that “younger consumers may never visit a broadcaster’s own website, even when they encounter its journalism on platforms such as TikTok. The challenge is therefore to deliver news where audiences already are, while giving them a way to verify that it genuinely came from the broadcaster.”

Ms Iida’s conclusion is that the case to management cannot rest on technology alone. Provenance is about protecting a broadcaster’s reputation and visibility, and keeping its journalism identifiable wherever it travels.

If you need to make that case in your own organisation, read the full article on the ABU website and then talk to the IPTC for advice on how to get started.