March 31, 2013

Prime Minister Abe for three months since his inauguration has wined and dined the heads of five major newspaper companies, which likely had an implicit impact on coverage by front-line reporters.

Abe started a series of private dinner meetings with Watanabe Tsuneo, chairman of Japan’s largest media conglomerate, the Yomiuri Group. On January 17, Abe had a three-hour dinner with Watanabe at a high-class Japanese restaurant in Palace Hotel Tokyo.

On the next day, he took out the Sankei Shimbun chairman to dinner at a Japanese restaurant at the ANA InterContinental Tokyo.

The following month, Abe arranged to have a rendezvous with the Asahi Shimbun president on February 7 at a Chinese restaurant at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo and with the Kyodo News president on February 15 at an exclusive Japanese restaurant in Tokyo. The series of the PM’s private dinner meetings at restaurants in luxury hotels ended with meeting with the Nikkei president on March 8 and with the Mainichi Newspapers president on March 28.

A veteran reporter of a major daily said, “As newspapers report on the prime minister’s daily schedule, a dinner meeting between the prime minister and the head of a newspaper will become public knowledge the next day. The media corporations may hesitate to run an article criticizing the prime minister while reporting on the dinner meeting between Abe and their presidents on the same page.”

The Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association on January 15 issued a statement calling on the government to apply a lower consumption tax rate on newspapers, contradicting the major papers’ coverage encouraging the government to raise the consumption tax rate on the general public. This has provoked fierce public criticism.

The series of dinner meetings has reportedly led to the government decision to levy a lower consumption tax rate on newspapers even when the higher consumption tax rate will be implemented on the general public.

In the media industry, it is understood that dinners with the prime minister will possibly affect the type of press coverage given to the issue related to constitutional revision.