This article's focus is mass media and their interaction with politics in Japan.
The five largest and most influential national newspapers are Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, Sankei Shimbun, and Nihon Keizai Shimbun [ citation needed ]. There are also more than 100 local newspapers. The population, 99 percent literate, also consumes record numbers of books and magazines. The latter range from high-quality comprehensive general circulation intellectual periodicals such as Sekai (World), Chuo Koron (Central Review), and Bungei Shunju (Literary Annals) to sarariman manga (salaryman comics), comic books for adults that depict the vicissitudes and fantasies of contemporary office workers, and weeklies specializing in scandals. Japan probably also leads the world in the translation of works by foreign scholars and novelists. Most of the classics of Western political thought, such as The Republic by Plato and Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, for example, are available in Japanese.
News programs and special features on television also give viewers detailed reports on political, economic, and social developments both at home and abroad. The sole, noncommercial public radio and television broadcasting network, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (Nippon Hoso Kyokai--NHK) provides generally balanced coverage. Unlike their counterparts in the United States, however, Japanese newscasters on NHK and commercial stations usually confine themselves to relating events and did not offer opinions or analysis.
The major magazines and newspapers are vocal critics of government policies and take great pains to map out the personal and financial ties that hold the conservative establishment together. Readers are regularly informed of matrimonial alliances between families of top politicians, civil servants, and business leaders, which in some ways resemble those of the old European aristocracy. The important print media are privately owned.
Observers, however, point out that the independence of the established press has been compromised by the pervasive "press club" system. Politicians and government agencies each have one of these clubs, which contain from 12 to almost 300 reporters from the different newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media. Club members are generally described as being closer to each other than they are to their employers. They also have a close and collaborative working relationship with the political figures or government agencies to which they are attached. There is little opportunity for reporters to establish a genuinely critical, independent stance because reporting distasteful matters might lead to exclusion from the club and thus inability to gain information and to write. Although the media have played a major role in exposing political scandals, some critics have accused the large newspapers, ostensibly oppositionist, of being little more than a conduit of government ideas to the people. Free-lance reporters, working outside the press club system, often made the real breakthroughs in investigative reporting. For example, a free-lance journalist published the first public accounts of Tanaka Kakuei's personal finances in a monthly magazine in 1974, even though the established press had access to this information.
The Japan Broadcasting Corporation, also known by its romanized initialism NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. It is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee.
Voice acting in Japan is an industry where actors provide voice-overs as characters or narrators in media including anime, video games, audio dramas, commercials, and dubbing for non-Japanese films and television programs.
The Yomiuri Shimbun (讀賣新聞/読売新聞) is a Japanese newspaper published in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and other major Japanese cities. It is one of the five major newspapers in Japan; the other four are The Asahi Shimbun, the Chunichi Shimbun, the Mainichi Shimbun, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. It is headquartered in Otemachi, Chiyoda, Tokyo.
The news media or news industry are forms of mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public. These include news agencies, newspapers, news magazines, news channels etc.
The Asahi Shimbun is one of the five largest newspapers in Japan. Founded in 1879, it is also one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. Its circulation, which was 4.57 million for its morning edition and 1.33 million for its evening edition as of July 2021, was second behind that of the Yomiuri Shimbun. By print circulation, it is the second largest newspaper in the world behind the Yomiuri, though its digital size trails that of many global newspapers including The New York Times.
The Sankei Shimbun, name short for Sangyō Keizai Shinbun, is a daily national newspaper in Japan published by the Sankei Shimbun Co., Ltd, ranking amongst the top 5 most circulated newspapers in Japan. Together with its English-language paper Japan Forward, the Sankei Shimbun has been described as having a conservative, nationalist, far-right political stance. It has previously published materials downplaying or denying Japanese war crimes.
The mass media in Japan include numerous television and radio networks as well as newspapers and magazines in Japan. For the most part, television networks were established based on capital investments by existing radio networks. Variety shows, serial dramas, and news constitute a large percentage of Japanese evening shows.
A kisha club is a Japanese news-gathering association of reporters from specific news organizations, whose reporting centers on a press room set up by sources such as the Prime Minister's Official Residence, government ministries, local authorities, the police, or corporate bodies. In English, it also called a Press Club.
Thailand has a well-developed mass media sector, especially by Southeast Asian standards. The Thai government and the military have long exercised considerable control, especially over radio and TV stations. During the governments of Thaksin Shinawatra and the subsequent military-run administration after the 2006 coup and military coup of 2014, the media in Thailand—both domestic and foreign—have suffered from increasing restrictions and censorship, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt.
Mass media in Morocco includes newspapers, radio, television, and Internet.
The South Korean mass media consist of several different types of public communication of news: television, radio, cinema, newspapers, magazines, and Internet-based websites.
Hiroko Kuniya is a Japanese news presenter and journalist. Kuniya was born in Osaka Prefecture and graduated from International School of the Sacred Heart in 1975 and then Brown University with majors in international relations and international economics. In 1981, she began to work as a news caster and writer for the English-language broadcasts of NHK television's Seven O'clock News. Starting in 1986, she served as a researcher in the United States for NHK Special. Later assignments included satellite and ground network news shows, including Asia Now (1990), which was picked up in the U.S. by Public Broadcasting Service.
John Hiromu Kitagawa, known professionally as Johnny Kitagawa, was a Japanese business magnate, promoter and record producer. He was best known as the founder of Johnny & Associates, a talent agency for numerous popular boy bands in Japan. He held the Guinness World Records for the most No. 1 artists, the most No. 1 singles, and the most concerts produced by an individual.
There are over ten different languages in the Israeli media, with Hebrew as the predominant one. Press in Arabic caters to the Arab citizens of Israel, with readers from areas including those governed by the Palestinian National Authority. During the eighties and nineties, the Israeli press underwent a process of significant change as the media gradually came to be controlled by a limited number of organizations, whereas the papers published by political parties began to disappear. Today, three large, privately owned conglomerates based in Tel Aviv dominate the mass media in Israel.
The mass media in Cyprus refers to mass media outlets based on the island of Cyprus, including both the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Television, magazines, and newspapers are all operated by both state-owned and for-profit corporations which depend on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues.
The mass media in Slovenia refers to mass media outlets based in Slovenia. Television, magazines, and newspapers are all operated by both state-owned and for-profit corporations which depend on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues. The Constitution of Slovenia guarantees freedom of speech and Slovenia ranked 40th in the 2016 Press Freedom Index report compiled by Reporters Without Borders, falling by 5 places if compared to the 2015 Index.
News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. News is sometimes called "hard news" to differentiate it from soft media.
The State Secrecy Law, officially the Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets (SDS) (特定秘密の保護に関する法律, Tokutei Himitsu no Hogo ni kansuru Hōritsu), Act No. 108 of 2013, is a law in Japan allowing the government to designate defense and other sensitive information as "special secrets" that are protected from public disclosure.
Nikkei, Inc. is a Japanese media company which owns The Nikkei and the Financial Times. Its first publication was in 1876 with the publication of The Chugai Bukka Shimpo . In 1946, the company name was changed to Nihon Keizai Shimbunsha, while the newspaper changed its title to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, both of which were later shortened to Nikkei.
The Second Kishida Cabinet is the 101st Cabinet of Japan and was formed in November 2021 by Fumio Kishida, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and Prime Minister of Japan.