Japanese government intimidating the media, says The Economist
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Version 0 of 1. The Japanese government is waging a campaign aimed at intimidating the media, according to an article in The Economist. It cites a number of incidents involving TV programmes and newspapers. “Discreet interventions by politicians have long been customary”, says the article. But matters became public when “a bureaucrat turned political gadfly, Shigeaki Koga, accused the government on a television show of strong-arming the media by securing his removal from Hodo Station, a news show owned by TV Asahi, a liberal broadcaster”. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), headed by prime minister Shinzo Abe, responded by grilling the programme’s producers over the outburst under the auspices of Japan’s broadcast law. Abe is also reported to have objected to TV interviews in which members of the public complain that his economic policies are not helping them. The article states: “Personnel changes at Japan’s main broadcasters are now routinely rumoured to be down to government pressure”. NHK, the state broadcaster that is run by Abe’s friend, Katsuto Momii, has declared an intent to stick more closely to the government line. The Economist article says the assault on broadcasters is accompanied by pressure on the daily newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, sister paper to TV Asahi. It reports that last autumn the government and conservative media outlets savaged it for its admission that some of its reporting on the imperial army’s wartime use of sex slaves had relied on false testimony. The broad historical facts are not in doubt, yet journalists say that inside the Asahi it has become hard to write about the issue. The paper’s political reporters are often too cowed even to ask questions at government press conferences, rivals say. Source: The Economist |