Japan Press Weekly

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2008 August 20 - 26 [POLITICS]

Senior LDP politicians and media people get together to bowl

Former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro and some other senior Liberal Democratic Party politicians joined with media people for bowling at a Tokyo hotel on August 13-14. LDP politicians present included former LDP Secretary General Nakagawa Hidenao.

Participants were members of the LDP Parliamentarian League for Promotion of Bowling, a 54-member group formed in April with Takebe Tsutomu as its leader.

On the first day, they played with people from the public broadcaster NHK and five commercial broadcasting stations. On the second day, they had a game with newspaper people. After the games, the politicians and media people had a friendly get-together, which lasted until just daybreak on August 15.

Why do TV stations want to cozy up to ruling party politicians?

Iwasaki Sadaaki, editor of Broadcasting Report says: “In Japan, only licensed broadcasting stations can air programs. This makes them apt to seek cozy relations with the government and the ruling party. The general affairs ministry’s licensing procedures are unclear. The license is renewed every five years, and this year they will have their licenses renewed at the end of October.”

For TV reporters to have a “get-together” with influential ruling party politicians at such a sensitive time might be considered a form of collusion. It was the Koizumi Cabinet that made the decision in 2001 to introduce the terrestrial digital broadcasting system.

“Under the system that media organizations are required to be members of the closed ‘club’, they are vying with each other to get into cozy relations with political power as a source of information. What they should do now is to reach out to needy people in order to report on the question of poverty, for example,” Iwasaki said. - Akahata, August 25, 2008