Kisha clubs

[thomas]

The EU seems to have gotten pretty active lately in regard to Japan.

EU takes aim at kisha clubs

=> http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=comment&id=276

Kisha clubs = reporters' clubs maintained by Japan's major dailies and TV networks

See also

=> http://www.hrea.org/lists/hr-headlin.../msg00443.html

Kisha Clubs and the Japanese Media

=> http://www.unc.edu/~wiltshir/kisha.html

Kisha Club Guidelines

=> http://www.pressnet.or.jp/english/about/kishaclub.htm

Pitfalls of press release journalism

A Japanese journalist sheds light on its disadvantages

=> http://www.journalism.ubc.ca/thunder...ber/japan.html

[moyashi]

kishia club = boys club

I had a student who worked for Kyodo a long time ago. He mentioned alot of things like you can't dig into the private lives of the Imperial Family and such.

So, it makes sense that these Kisha clubs also are a way of keeping a leash on their reporters. One step out of line = cut off of early information supply or what not.

I read the last link about the Jornalist guy. Interesting that he mentioned that much of the important news is never mentioned. Back during the Sarin incident the Foreign news programs had Asahara Shoko as the perpetrator while the Japanese news just had news reports back to back but yet the link was not until much later. So, I always listen to the news now for what is not being said.

[thomas]

EU asks Japan to give foreign media better access

"It was the first time the EU has raised the issue of press rights at the annual bilateral talks since they began in 1994. Foreign Ministry officials also said they have not received such requests from foreign countries in recent years. [...]

The EU said it has received complaints from major European media and European journalists working in Japan that they had difficulties in obtaining first-hand access to information related to key events such as the Sept 17 visit to Pyongyang by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi."

My oh my, these insolent Europeans, asking for unfiltered news!

=> http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content...at=1&id=240164

[thomas]

Kisha clubs and self-censorship in Japan revisited:

Media hounds muzzle selves - Japan's news organizations exercise self-censorship

Thus the defining feature of media in Japan had emerged: this may be the only country in the world where all the freedoms of the press exist, legally speaking, but where the journalists chose not to exercise those freedoms.

A friend of mine, a London-based reporter for the Reuters news service who once studied and worked in Japan, was quick to realize that much. "In Britain," he told me, "when you form a simple picture of the society in your mind, the government and police are on one side of a fence and the public and the media are together on the other. But in Japan, it's the government, police and the media on one side, and the public by themselves on the other."

=> http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/...20030422zg.htm