Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Laurie Anne Freeman is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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CLOSING THE SHOP

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

List of Tables and Figures........................................................................................xiPreface...........................................................................................................xiiiOne Bringing in the Media........................................................................................3Two Press, Politics, and the Public in Historical Perspective....................................................23Three Japan's Information Cartels: Part I. Competition and the Closed Shop.......................................62Four Japan's Information Cartels: Part II. Structuring Relations Through Rules and Sanctions.....................102Five Expanding the Web: The Role of Kyokai and Keiretsu..........................................................142Six Why Information Cartels Matter...............................................................................160A. Regulations for the Diet Press Club............................................................................181B. Kitami Administration of Justice Press Club Agreement..........................................................187C. Chronology of Agreements between the Imperial Household Agency and the Magazine Kisha Club.....................191D. A Comparison with the British Lobby............................................................................194Notes.............................................................................................................199Bibliography......................................................................................................229Index.............................................................................................................247

Chapter One

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. (James Madison, 1822)

Between consciousness and existence stand communications, which influence such consciousness as men have of their existence. (C. Wright Mills, 1951)

Perhaps no institution in democratic society has the same Janus-faced image as the media. On the one hand, they profess and are believed by many to exist for the good of the public. Their job is to inform their readers and audiences about important events and help them interpret those events. They are also to guard against the unrestrained exercise of power by vested interests—their famous role as the "fourth estate" in democratic society. On the other hand, in order to get the information that would enable them to play this role, they must locate themselves within the political and economic centers of state power. This position exposes the media to possible cooptation by those same powers and affects their ability to remain independent and objective.

Our normative image of journalism in a free society reflects the idea of market competition—one of an intense rivalry for information and audiences, and of adversarial relations with sources and competitors. The idea is that this competition is important to the development of "a vigorous and diverse marketplace of ideas"—one that nurtures and sustains the social and political life of its citizenry. This is an ideal type that is perhaps nowhere fully accomplished. Yet the degree to which theory and reality diverge varies substantially across countries, making this an important, if underdeveloped, component in comparative political analysis.

This study challenges the applicability of this marketplace metaphor to the press-politics relationship in Japan. Through arrangements such as press clubs, industry associations, and intermedia business groups, the media in Japan are dominated by what I refer to as information cartels: institutionalized rules and relationships guiding press relations with their sources and with each other that serve to limit the types of news that get reported and the number and makeup of those who do the reporting. By reinforcing close ties with official sources while restricting competition among journalists, Japan's information cartels have redefined the relationship between political elites and news outlets. Instead of anticipating stories and shaping emerging news, the Japanese press primarily responds to an agenda of political discourse that has already been set.

Why should we care about this aspect of the press-politics relationship? Because the cartelization of information that results from the institutionalization of close relations between reporters and official news sources limits the ability of journalists and newspapers to carry out independent reporting and standardizes news reporting within the mainstream press. While these cartels have no doubt proven mutually beneficial for political and media elites in Japan—the first by controlling access to and the dissemination of information about political events, and the second by limiting rivalry among ostensible competitors—the consequences of cartelization for other groups inside and outside of Japan are more problematic.

Consider the following events that have occurred over the past decade, each of which saw the Japanese press play a role not as anti-establishment critic but as active participant:

• In the Recruit stock-for-favors scandal that broke in the summer of 1988, executives from three of Japan's major news organizations were implicated and later forced to resign.

• In the Itoman loans-for-favors scandal two years later, the Prosecutor's Office charged that a defendant in the case had paid a collaborator in the Nihon keizai shimbun (Japan's Wall Street Journal) and a lesser-known weekly magazine the equivalent of $75,000 to write favorable stories about the scandal-tainted company.

No doubt blatant abuses of media power such as these are relatively rare, yet their existence requires explanation. So too do instances where the press has failed to report stories of obvious importance.

• In January 1992, for example, when U.S. President George Bush collapsed at an official dinner in Tokyo, the American public was the first to see the video of the incident—the Japanese press having acquiesced in toto to a Japanese government demand that it not air the piece.

• A year later, in January 1993, it was again the American public who were the first to learn that Owada Masako, a career diplomat, would wed the Japanese crown prince—the Japanese press having agreed months earlier to an Imperial Household Agency request that it impose a complete news embargo on the crown prince's search for a bride, a ban that lasted for close to a year.

• In a more alarming case, in 1995 a major Japanese national broadcasting station, TBS, shared with members of the Aum cult (responsible for gassing Tokyo subways) video footage of a critical interview with a lawyer representing families who had grievances against the cult. Several days later, the lawyer, his wife, and their infant son disappeared, never to be heard from again. But TBS never revealed to the police (or its viewing audience) its activities preceding the disappearance, though timely reporting might...