TL;DR Right-wing populist party Sanseito removed a reporter from the Kanagawa Shimbun newspaper from a press conference, citing the reporter’s critical articles about a party member. The Kanagawa Shimbun protested the action, stating it disregards the public’s right to know and journalism as a whole.
by SkyInJapan
16 comments
To be fair, this is a common issue for press in Japan, including for reporters reporting on companies or LDP
Fascist parties gonna fascist.
I moved to Japan to escape this shit. 😡
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Is this not just another Kisha club in action?
Straight out of Trump’s playbook
Standard playbook stuff.
This depresses me, I spend a month per year in Japan and love it and to see it lurch to the right like this is heartbreaking, I’ll be less and less welcome.
Isn’t the leader of sanseito a pedo?
This may shock the naive among you, but Japan doesn’t actually have freedom of the press, and it quietly keeps journalists from making too much trouble for the business and political establishment.
Consider this; have you ever seen the Japanese press criticize the Emperor the way that the press criticizes royalty in other countries? Probably not, because the Japanese press censors itself on this.
[DW – Why Japan ranks poorly in press freedom](https://amp.dw.com/en/why-japan-ranks-poorly-in-press-freedom/a-65549778)
Man reddit gets to me sometimes.
I would vote Sanseito if
1.) I could vote
2.) They weren’t anti-vax
Their stance on foreigners is rational, and this thing with kicking out a journalist… LDP have the benefit of a degree of collaboration with the media that is completely absurd. If you’re seriously mad about how Sanseito interacts with the media your priorities are equally absurd.
The correct response to this is for every other media outlet to also leave the press conference, denying them any coverage whatsoever.
If you don’t stand together, even with media outlets that have different political leanings to your own, then you can’t properly defend and ensure your own press freedoms.
Makes Putin Proud of Pro-Putin Putinites Putin’ Power to Putin
Restricting access to reporters is a massive problem, but it has to be noted that there seems to be a problem with the reporter that Sanseito barred from their press conference, since he was reportedly actively ranting and blocking street-corner speeches with left activists during the election campaign.
Some press conferences need to be restricted to avoid mayhem. When Fuji TV held a press conference to explain what happened with the Masahiro Nakai problem in January, the conference went on for 10 hours because they just couldn’t restrict anybody from entering. Was there any substance in the conference? Absolutely no, since some “reporters” were asking the same question over and over again, or were ranting their projections.
Similar things happen in cabinet secretary press briefings held every day; some people don’t ask questions but rant on their opinions. There are rules when asking at these briefings, but some reporters clearly do not follow the rules. The cabinet cannot ban these people from the briefings since they don’t want to be seen as muzzling the media. On the other hand, the outlets that hire these reporters don’t dress down or address these issues because “ranting publicly at the cabinet secretary” leads to gaining fans, resulting in the reporters clout and end up giving them a conviction that they’re doing the “right thing.”
Being critical and questioning the government is important, and barring reporters is wrong, but some reporters shouldn’t be at some press conferences, since they’re activists disguised as journalists and just rant from the seats without facing any consequences.
That is how it begins! I had haved hoped that Japan would look at the USA and thought, “No, history has taught us that that is the road to hell, let’s not ho there!”.
It is well known Japan’s press is very close to the existing power, LDP and big business.
This reporter and Kanagawa Shimbun are left leaning, and hired a group of thugs to disturb Sanseito’s meeting.
He may have deserved to be removed, for his reporting is often emotionally charged trash.
LDP uses tactics of favoritism by inviting some to a meal or giving important informations and letting them know when to be silent.
Well, I don’t know how to improve this problem since Japan is small and they all know each other and want no enemies.
Behaving like The Felon Trump, now, are we?