{"id":7645,"date":"2015-04-28T05:36:06","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T10:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7645"},"modified":"2015-04-28T05:36:06","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T10:36:06","slug":"effort-by-japan-to-stifle-news-media-is-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7645","title":{"rendered":"Effort by Japan to Stifle News Media Is Working"},"content":{"rendered":"

Effort by Japan to Stifle News Media Is Working<\/a><\/h3>\n

It was an unexpected act of protest that shook\u00a0Japan<\/a>\u2019s carefully managed media world: Shigeaki Koga, a regular television commentator and fierce critic of the political establishment, abruptly departed from the scripted conversation during a live TV news program to announce that this would be his last day on the show because, as he put it, network executives had succumbed to political pressure for his removal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have suffered intense bashing by the prime minister\u2019s office,\u201d Mr. Koga told his visibly flabbergasted host late last month, saying he had been removed as commentator because of critical statements he had made about Prime Minister\u00a0Shinzo Abe<\/a>. Later in the program, Mr. Koga held up a sign that read \u201cI am not Abe,\u201d a play on the slogan of solidarity for journalists slain in January at a French satirical newspaper.<\/p>\n

The outburst created a public firestorm, and not only because of the spectacle of Mr. Koga, a dour-faced former top government official, seemingly throwing away his career as a television commentator in front of millions of viewers. His angry show of defiance also focused national attention on the right-leaning government\u2019s increased strong-arming of the news media to reduce critical coverage.<\/p>\n

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Many journalists and political experts say the Abe government is trying to engineer a fundamental shift in the balance of power between his administration and the news media, using tactics to silence criticism that go beyond anything his predecessors tried and that have frustrated many journalists. These have included more aggressive complaints to the bosses of critical journalists and commentators like Mr. Koga, and more blatant retaliation against outlets that persist in faulting the administration. At the same time, Mr. Abe has tried to win over top media executives and noted journalists with private sushi lunches.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Effort by Japan to Stifle News Media Is Working It was an unexpected act of protest that shook\u00a0Japan\u2019s carefully managed media world: Shigeaki Koga, a regular television commentator and fierce critic of the political establishment, abruptly departed from the scripted conversation during a live TV news program to announce that this would be his last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[120,336,452,512,1426,1494,655,710],"class_list":["post-7645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-censorship","tag-free-press","tag-japan","tag-media","tag-misinformation","tag-press","tag-propaganda","tag-secrecy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7646,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7645\/revisions\/7646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}