According to today’s New York Times (5/29/09), there’s a scandal brewing in the Japanese media. Apparently in its coverage of a current political scandal, the Japanese press has “reported at face value a stream of anonymous allegations, some of them thinly veiled leaks from within the investigation.”
The Times goes on to note that “big news organizations here have long been accused of being too cozy with centers of power”; the end result is “bland reporting that adheres to the official line. ” For their part, journalists “say government officials sometimes try to force them to toe the line with threats of losing access to information. ”
Bland reporting that toes the government line and relies on leaks that are not properly vetted. It sounds terrible over there.
