An Ally's Undemocratic Media

By Rory O'Connor
Media is a Plural

NEW YORK, March 21, 2005 -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Tokyo this weekend, bluntly if diplomatically suggesting democracy -- or at least "some form of open, genuinely representative government" eventually be embraced by China.

Rice made no mention, however, of the need for democratic reform in another one-party state that has instead hugged capitalism, while divorcing itself from certain democratic principles such as freedom of the press

That country, of course, is the one Secretary Rice was speaking from -- Japan -- where Big Media and Big Government have been in cahoots since before World War II, as detailed in a new book by Adam Gamble & Takesato Watanabe, "A Public Betrayed: An Inside Look at Japanese Media Atrocities and Their Warnings to the West."

As Gamble and Watanabe show, their use of the word "atrocities" when describing certain Japanese media practices is no exaggeration. The mainstream press in Japan is rife with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and denial that the Holocaust ever happened is not uncommon. One major monthly magazine, for example, printed a story headlined: "The Greatest Taboo in Post-War History: There Were No Nazi Gas Chambers."

The facts underlying other World War II events are also regularly ignored or whitewashed by Japan's controlled press. They include the historical details of the Nanjing Massacre -- when Japanese soldiers slaughtered hundreds of thousands of unarmed people, and raped tens of thousands of them -- and Japan's so-called "comfort system," which took as many as two hundred thousand girls and young women from occupied lands and turned them into sexual slaves for Japanese soldiers.

The damage, however, is not limited to historical events such as World War II. It extends instead even to the present time -- and war. When Japanese political leaders decided to support President Bush's war in Iraq by deploying troops there despite public opposition, the country's controlled, compliant media helped foster the fig-leaf lie dutifully that the troops were merely "Self-Defense Forces" in a "non-combat zone," and thus constitutionally deployed. Perhaps worse, mainstream Japanese outlets have since withdrawn their personnel entirely and now rely exclusively on official military sources for news about the troops. Meanwhile, as Gamble and Watanabe detail, the media also faithfully followed the party line last year when Japanese civilians were taken hostage -- attacking the victims as unpatriotic for having embarrassed the government instead of rejoicing in their eventual freedom, as one might expect.

In sum, as Gamble and Watanabe demonstrate, Japan has "the least independent, and arguably the least trustworthy, news media in the democratic world, whose transgressions could shock the most jaundiced American audience."

On the other hand, those transgressions may appear increasingly familiar to American audiences. After all, the Japanese system of media control, while pre-dating World War II, was not only left in place but strengthened after the War, when the United States occupied Japan, dictated its Constitution, and reorganized its society.

"After the American occupation, the same people controlled the media as before the War," Professor Watanabe said in an interview. "GHQ (General Headquarters, the American Command) used the pre-War media system to censor and control during the occupation, and then passed it on intact to the Japanese, and the same people took it over again. After the occupation, the Liberal democratic Party came to power, supported by the CIA, where it remains today."

A soft system of censorship and control? A highly consolidated, vertically integrated oligopoly of ownership, coupled with a synergistic, symbiotic relationship with government? Government subsidized media as opinion-makers? Compliant, clubby corporate journalists who get along by going along, and exchange investigation and independence for access and success?

Sure sounds like atrocities to me. But at least it could never happen here?

Could it?

What do you think? Post a comment.

-- Rory O'Connor's blog, "Media Is a Plural," can be found at www.roryoconnor.org.

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