Public broadcasting, media ownership and democratic debate in Japan

Compared to the United States and Europe where global media conglomerates are transforming the media landscape, Japan’s media system has remained surprisingly stable over the last decade. Japan’s media was virtually immune from corporate media globalisation until the early 1990s when Rupert Murdoch’s pan-Asian satellite broadcaster Star TV arrived on the scene.

In order to found JSkyB – the equivalent it was hoped of the UK’s hugely dominant BskyB – Murdoch bought a twenty per cent stake in TV Asahi, one of Japan’s five major television networks, causing a major shock to the Japanese psyche. Many Japanese media pundits believed that this was an unwarranted forced opening of the country’s media, akin to the arrival of US Commodore Perry’s ‘black ships’ in the bay of Tokyo in 1853 which opened Japan to the world.

The wariness with which this perceived invasion of the airwaves was greeted appears to be a factor behind the reluctance of other Japanese media players to join Murdoch’s JSkyB coalition. Murdoch sold his Asahi shares within a year. Japanese satellite TV services have since expanded somewhat but terrestrial television continues to be the dominant form of television in Japan.

The major players in the television market are Japan’s public broadcaster NHK and the commercial networks Nihon TV, TBS, Fuji TV and TV Asahi. Although cross-media ownership is restricted by law, Japan’s main newspaper groups hold a majority stake in their affiliated TV networks, partly through direct ownership and partly through various subsidiaries.

Japanese PSB: serving the nation by serving the ruling party

The Japanese broadcasting laws make Japan’s public broadcaster NHK one of the most autonomous public broadcasting networks in the world. However, as Ellis Krauss points out in his book Broadcasting Politics in Japan: NHK and Television News (2000), the peculiarities of Japan’s political system have allowed the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to use many unofficial means of limiting NHK’s journalistic freedom.

NHK’s total annual budget has to be passed by the Diet (parliament). This would not necessarily create a problem in a country where there is a regular change of government. But in Japan, where a single party has dominated parliament since 1955, this system essentially gives one party control over NHK’s budget. The long period of LDP incumbency has led to strong links between the party and the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications (MPHPT) which controls media licences.

The MPHPT oversees compliance with Japanese broadcasting laws which demand that programs be “politically impartial” (Chapter I-2, Article 3-2, clause 1 iii). In the Japanese context, “politically impartial” is often interpreted as “politically neutral”. There are also close links between the LDP, the MPHPT and NHK’s Board of Governors. Among other things, the Board appoints NHK’s president, thus providing the LDP with yet another avenue to influence the public broadcaster.

NHK has struggled to maintain the image of a reliable and objective news source, while not antagonising the political leadership, by avoiding controversial topics and concentrating on neutral, authoritative and bureaucratic news. The public broadcaster is clearly limited in its scope to provide critical reporting or analysis of political issues.

The free market?

Commercial television began to fill this news gap in the mid-1980s. The strong position commercial broadcasting presently holds in the news and current affairs sector is a relatively recent development in Japan. Some commercial networks had been seen as reputable and independent news providers until the 1960s, when strong pressure from political and industrial interests spelled an end to many critical news programs in the context of the social unrest around the Vietnam War and the controversy surrounding the construction of Tokyo’s international airport in Narita. By the 1970s, all private stations had discontinued news reporting and concentrated instead on the entertainment sector, so that the public broadcaster NHK came to hold a virtual monopoly on news broadcasting in Japan.

This situation only changed in the mid-1980s when TV Asahi introduced a news show called Newsstation. The makers of Newsstation recognised the growing public demand for political analysis and critical news reporting. By that time some commercial broadcasting networks had grown into large media organisations which gave them somewhat greater independence from individual industrial sponsors. While TV Asahi remains the most outspoken and controversial television network in Japan, the other media networks now also broadcast their own brand of news shows with a mix of news, opinion and entertainment.

Political manipulation and press quietism

Many conservative politicians in Japan became concerned with the way commercial news broadcasting was developing. According to a report in the Mainichi Shimbun of 2 November 1989, the then Minister for International Trade and Industry, Seiroku Kajiyama (LDP), demanded at an unofficial meeting with representatives of the automobile industry that they stop sponsoring TV Asahi. Subsequently, the Japanese car-maker Toyota pulled out of its advertising agreement with TV Asahi.

In 1993, the lingering conflict between some members of the LDP and the commercial broadcasting sector erupted when the party attributed its first defeat in a general election since 1955 to the reporting of Newsstation. The LDP, which soon afterwards regained its dominant role in government, was so angered over TV Asahi’s alleged political bias that they tried (albeit unsuccessfully) to have TV Asahi’s broadcasting licence withdrawn.

But what can only be seen as a massive attempt at political manipulation and suppression of free speech and public debate was not perceived as such by Japan’s print media. Rather than analysing the relationship between politics and the media, the print media instead criticised the journalistic qualities of television. Critical analysts in Japan pointed to rivalries between print and electronic media and cross-media ownership as the main reasons for the print media’s failure to provide an adequate public debate on these issues.

Following a major LDP loss in the 1998 Upper House election, the party began monitoring the media even more closely to detect any coverage the LDP deemed as being ‘unfair’. The English-language newspaper, The Japan Times, published an article on 28 November 2000 which outlined the various measures the LDP was considering taking to enforce stricter ‘self discipline’ on the media, allegedly supported by anti-media sentiments in the general public.

Such sentiments may well exist given the dramatised and sensationalised reporting of some media outlets and the disregard they show for individuals’ privacy. However within some sections of the LDP the right to individual privacy is being used as a cover to protect politicians from perfectly justifiable press scrutiny.

The current Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, is (unlike many of his LDP colleagues) a media-savvy politician whose favourable public profile contrasts with the limited backing he receives from within his own party ranks. The response to his recent firing of the controversial, but even more popular Foreign Minister, Makiko Tanaka, is only the latest example of the increase in political coverage on commercial television news compared to the mid-1990s, and a less restrictive attitude on the part of the ruling party to media reporting.

The question is whether, amidst the crowding in of economic and social problems in Japan, the media’s new interest in political affairs and their access to government will be sustained much beyond the media-friendly Koizumi regime.