New DPJ administration promises transparency and media reform.
Among the many reforms hoped for from the new administration headed by the DPJ is a commitment to increase transparency and improve media access. Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada took one big step in that direction by opening up a ministerial press conference at the end of September to some overseas media, freelancers and writers for online outlets. Other ministers have followed suit. “This is a matter of the public’s right to know,” declared Okada at the press conference.
Much attention is now focused on the continued reform of the kisha clubs or press clubs: associations of journalists attached to specific ministries, companies, industries or other institutions. Defenders claim press clubs are a way for journalists to band together to obtain information, while critics point to restrictive membership practices and overly collusive relationships with sources.
Originating in 1890 from a single club to help reporters gain access to parliamentary business, press clubs are estimated to number somewhere between 800 and 1,500, and are still the conduit through which the majority of news in Japan passes. Failure to understand how they work can be a considerable disadvantage in doing business, and in the worst case, potentially disastrous.
Long dominated by the major domestic newspapers and broadcasters, the kisha clubs have begun opening up to freelancers, magazine reporters and overseas media in recent years. Accredited European journalists were admitted in 2002 after pressure from the Delegation of the European Commission to Japan.
Just being a member, however, is rarely enough to gain full access to the inner workings and unofficial briefings of the clubs. This requires spending all one’s time at a club and taking over administrative duties in rotation – a luxury few foreign media organisations can afford.
Yet, the kisha clubs have not prospered and grown for so long without offering benefits to many of the participants, and even some outside the system.
“Press clubs are a very efficient way of disseminating information and a very powerful tool,” suggests Jochen Legewie, president of CNC Japan consultants and chairman of the EBC Media and Communications Committee. “For certain companies, they can go there and do a press release, and with one stroke, they have all the important media covering them.”
But Legewie plays down the importance of kisha clubs for the day-to-day business of most firms, which are mainly interested in getting into the trade media – not usually to be found at press clubs.
“The press clubs come into the game when: one, it’s an industry in which regulation or government has a good deal of importance in it; or two, when a company is under special scrutiny following a product recall or some form of scandal,” notes Legewie. “Then a press club becomes very important, and it is usually to the detriment of the company.”
Many foreign firms lack the expertise to leverage the system past simple press conferences. “For example, when you go to a press club and do a press conference there is usually a tabako beya (smoking room), where either prior to or after the formal press conference, additional information and guidance are given,” explains Legewie.
If a global company finds itself facing a potential scandal, even with the best advice it may still be at a disadvantage because the press clubs will be looking for a Japanese-style reaction – immediately announcing pay cuts for all involved, or having the president step down.
“A foreign company struggles with these gestures as they have global rules and codes of conduct. So the foreign firms are very reluctant to do what the press club system often demands – this ritual of purification,” adds Legewie.
Industry kisha clubs are often hosted by the ministry overseeing that sector, which can cause conflicts of interest for reporters. In the scandals involving Schindler and Mitsubishi Fuso, there were suggestions that tacit ministerial approval of industry-wide practices had contributed to the fatal accidents. However, the close relationships between bureaucrats and the journalists made it far easier to go after the companies.
Individual journalists cannot afford to upset the wrong people and risk losing access, explains Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice: An American reporter on the police beat in Japan and the first Westerner to join the Tokyo Metropolitan Police press club.
“You can write scoops and you may rise up the food chain, but what will kill your career is toku-ochi (special drop); that’s where every other newspaper writes a story and you didn’t. This is the whip that the kisha club uses to keep reporters in line. They basically threaten to block you and keep you out of the loop when a major story breaks.”
Though the DPJ is getting credit for opening up some ministry conferences to the wider media, thus weakening the kisha clubs, it looks like it might take a little while longer for change to work its way through to the business world.
At a November press conference on the kisha club system at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, Hiroshi Aida, a senior writer at Kyodo News, put it very simply, “For private businesses: things are still going on the way they were before.”