Republication Date: 2026-07-24
Original Publication Date: 2017-07-16

Japan’s mainstream media claim to monitor those in power, yet they remain heavily dependent on the press club system and on information supplied by government bureaucrats.
Drawing on a dialogue between Yukihiro Hasegawa and Kent Gilbert, this article examines the intellectual collapse of a media establishment whose reporters often lack basic knowledge of economics and international affairs and mistake repeating official explanations for genuine journalism.

2017-07-16
The following article was originally published on July 16, 2017.
Japan’s mainstream media claim that their mission is to monitor those in power.
In practice, however, many journalists remain dependent on the press club system, receiving information from bureaucrats and passing official explanations directly to the public.
Can that truly be called journalism when reporters lack basic knowledge of economic policy and international affairs and fail to investigate or think independently?
Because this question remains critically important to Japan today, I am republishing this article to the world on July 24, 2026.

This Is Not Journalism

In my view, this is not reporting at all.
It is simply a failure to think independently.
A newspaper advertisement recently appeared for a collection of dialogues between veteran journalist Yukihiro Hasegawa and Kent Gilbert, published by Business-sha.
This is a book that should be read not only by the Japanese people but also by readers throughout the world.
Why are so many newspaper reporters and people who describe themselves as journalists on television news programmes so inadequate?
Why was the reporting presented by Arima and Kuwako, who were then appearing on NHK’s News Watch 9, so deeply unsatisfactory?
Yukihiro Hasegawa provides a clear answer to these questions.
The following is the substance of their dialogue.

A Media Establishment That Has Lost Its Freedom

Hasegawa argues that established journalism is not truly free.
In that respect, it has fallen far behind the internet, and there is little indication that it is making any serious effort to regain its independence.
The mainstream media claim to monitor the government.
In reality, however, they remain overwhelmingly dependent on the press club system.
They receive the bait of exclusive stories and simply pass along what the government and bureaucrats tell them.
Gilbert observes that being paid merely to pass information from one party to another sounds like an easy occupation.
Hasegawa replies that this is the present condition of Japanese journalism and that he finds it deeply absurd.

The Basic Knowledge Journalists Require

For journalism to remain independent of government and participate in free thought and debate, reporters must first acquire basic academic competence, just as politicians and bureaucrats must.
This includes a basic understanding of economic policy and international affairs.
Yet when one asks how many journalists possess such knowledge, the answer is that there are very few.
Some reporters may have read, or at least glanced at, an economics textbook.
In many cases, however, they have not truly understood or absorbed its contents.
Consider what economic reporters do when writing about monetary or fiscal policy.
A reporter without a grounding in economics asks the Bank of Japan to explain monetary policy and asks the Ministry of Finance to explain fiscal policy.
In other words, the reporter is taught everything by bureaucrats.

Is Calling a Bureaucrat Really Reporting?

Even after becoming editorial writers, many journalists first telephone bureaucrats rather than conducting their own investigations and thinking independently.
After receiving an official explanation, they feel that they have completed their reporting.
In my view, that is not reporting.
It is simply the abandonment of independent thought.
Bureaucrats understand the intellectual level of such reporters and editorial writers.
They therefore use them whenever it is convenient.

The Intellectual Collapse of Japan’s Media

Journalism is not the act of transcribing what bureaucrats say.
A news organisation that claims to monitor those in power must question official explanations, examine documents, listen to competing accounts, and verify facts independently.
Anyone who writes about economics or foreign affairs must possess the basic knowledge required to understand those subjects.
Calling a government ministry and reproducing its explanation does not constitute reporting.
It is an abandonment of intellectual responsibility.
The mainstream media claim to monitor the government while remaining almost entirely dependent on the government and its bureaucrats for information.
That contradiction lies at the heart of the crisis facing Japanese journalism.
What Japan’s media need is not more information handed to them through the press club system.
They need the ability to study, investigate, think, and reach conclusions for themselves.
When journalists lose those abilities, news organisations cease to be watchdogs over power.
They become little more than channels through which bureaucratic explanations are transmitted to society.
This is not journalism.
It is the intellectual collapse of Japan’s media.
This article is republished to the world on July 24, 2026.