Spotlight: Japan's press freedom at stake under Abe administration

A recent report by David Kaye, United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights, shows that the Japanese media are increasingly concerned about the government's suppression of public opinion and muzzling of the press.

As many Japanese media professionals see it, since Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe assumed office in 2012, the government went to great lengths to control the climate of public opinion and to suppress liberal media. Japanese media of late are becoming increasingly reluctant to touch upon sensitive issues and the so-called press freedom in Japan is only a mere shadow of its fully-democratic role in past years.

LIBERAL MEDIA GAGGED

A landmark suppression of media by Abe's government was the comfort women furore caused by the Japanese Asahi Shimbun newspaper in 2014.

Under pressure from the government, the Asahi Shimbun was forced to admit its reports on the comfort women issue were "inaccurate". As a result, the credibility of the highly-regarded paper was somewhat dented and sales dropped.

"Since then, the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's flagship liberal voice, began avoiding issues and cut down critical reports on the Abe administration. There have been reporters of senior journalists who resigned, angry at the government's repression of the press," said Seigo Arasaki, president of Japan Federation of Newspaper Workers' Unions and former reporter of Kyodo News.

"The Asahi Shimbun is a flag bearer of the press circles. Repression of the Asahi Shimbun makes the Japanese media feel a strong sense of crisis," he said.

The Japan Federation of Newspaper Workers' Unions is the largest union of journalists in Japan with more than 22, 000 members. Eighty percent of newspaper reporters in Japan are members of the union.

"In Japan, weekly magazines often report issues that mainstream media do not have the courage to touch upon. But after the incident with the Asahi Shimbun, magazines, afraid of revenge, started to also avoid critical reports of the government," said Arasaki.

Last July, chief editor of Japanese magazine Weekly Post was suddenly dismissed from his post following the magazine's exposure of scandals about Abe government members in a series of issues.

Abe even used his administrative power to handpick his close ally and personal friend Katsuto Momii, a known rightwinger with revisionist tendencies, as chief of the largest public broadcaster NHK. Momii claimed at his inauguration in 2014 that media shall strictly follow the government which shocked the public. NHK's other boardmembers were also all handpicked by Abe and his Cabinet, which doubles up as his rightwing coterie of close allies.

"Since Abe is in power, NHK's prime time programs have been avoiding or massively diluting sensitive issues," said Arasaki.

A number of liberal TV professionals have been unceremoniously fired or transferred recently, including a popular host from current affairs program of Asahi TV who was well known for criticizing the Abe government, as well as hosts and commentators from TBS and NHK, among others.

"These are all liberals who are against Abe on issues such as the new security laws, nuclear policy and so on. Obviously, those criticizing Abe are disappearing one by one from the screen, but on scale that is becoming very noticeable" a media insider told Xinhua, requesting anonymity.

MEDIA MANIPULATION

Meanwhile, the Abe administration has also been trying to manipulate the media through bribery, intimidation and other coercive methods.

As suggested by some Japanese media outlets, Abe has had private dinners with high-level management or editors of media organizations around 70 times since he assumed power at the end of 2014, far more exceeding former prime ministers of Japan and arousing many questions and ongoing suspicion as to the backroom agenda.

Abe's government has also intimidated the media into self-censoring. At the end of 2014, Abe's LDP notified major private TV stations to make sure so-called "fairness" in content and guest choice of programs were suitable for the government. "Such flagrant interference with the press has never been heard of before," said Arasaki.

Last June, at a gathering of the ruling LDP lawmakers, a lawmaker claimed that "the best way to punish the press is to cut off their advertising revenue," and asked the economic community to control the income source of the media and bankrupt those that criticize the government.

In February, the minister of Internal Affairs and Communications of the Abe government claimed that if TV stations violate the so-called "political fairness" principle, the TV station could be shut down. Whether the TV station violates such principle is at the government's autonomous discretion, which makes the minister's words an assumed, if not direct threat to those TV stations criticizing the government.

"Self-censorship in Japanese media is becoming more common. Many media choose to dilute or avoid reporting on sensitive issues and critical reports to avoid trouble. Such situations are worrisome," said Arasaki.

"Since the secrecy laws were enacted over a year ago, Japanese media have found it more difficult to interview or get information from civil servants in the defense ministry and other government departments, as they are afraid of being punished and refuse to be interviewed," said Arasaki.

Senior professors at state-backed or party government-funded universities and other notable analysts working for government educational institutions or state-funded think tanks have also become increasingly reluctant to speak out about the Abe administration to the press, for the same reasons of fear and reprisal.

"The secrecy laws will punish media who obtain information illegally, but do not specify which kind of methods are illegal. It forces the media to resort to self censorship," he added.

Local media in Okinawa were even directly attacked for their critical stance of the government. According to Tsuyoshi Arakaki, member of editorial board of Ryukyushimpo, the paper's attempt to rent an office in Tokyo was rejected and rightwingers viciously attacked the paper on the Internet.

ALL EYES ON JAPAN

Abe's suppression of press freedom has caught the attention of well-known international media.

Carsten Germis, a well-known correspondent from German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, said last April in an article that he was baselessly accused by Japan of being "nobbled" by the Chinese government after publishing reports criticizing Abe government's historical revisionism.

Martin Fackler, former head of the Tokyo branch of the New York Times, published a book in Japanese-language here in February, which, translated as "Japanese media succumbed by Abe administration," denounces Abe's government for undermining press freedom. Endit