An Asahi Newspaper editorial called the recent Japanese general election campaign “one of the most interesting elections ever.” Certainly, few polls in memory have so gripped the public and media.

When Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took a deeply divided Liberal Democratic Party into the snap election, many believed it was political suicide. Koizumi staked his political life and his legacy on the poll. In any event, “lionheart” Koizumi’s brinkmanship paid off. The Sept. 11 poll delivered the ruling party a historic landslide victory. As Gerald Curtis, an expert in Japanese politics at Columbia University, commented shortly after the election: “This was not a victory of the LDP, this was a victory of Koizumi.”

Ofer Feldman, a professor at Doshisha University, credits much of Koizumi’s success to his astute (and sometimes forceful) handling of the media. He says that Koizumi is a new kind of politician for a new kind of Japanese political culture – more a leader in the Western style than the old consensus-building traditional Japanese politician. He is a leader who “has a dialogue with the people and the ability to influence them.”

Some commentators have spoken of a watershed in Japanese politics, yet Feldman is skeptical. He doesn’t think the LDP’s grassroots political machine has changed much; “pork-barrel politics will probably continue forever.” And he points out that the prime minster’s phenomenal success may be a double-edged sword for the party. Koizumi has shown himself to be a master of political theater. When the time comes to choose a new leader, he will be a tough act to follow.

Israeli-born Ofer Feldman is a Professor of Political Process in the Faculty of Policy Studies at Doshisha University. He is the author of “Talking Politics in Japan Today,” “The Japanese Political Personality” and “Politics and the News Media in Japan.”

JMR: Koizumi very successfully focused the election on one issue – postal-reform. Why couldn’t the Democratic Party broaden the debate?

Ofer Feldman: If there was effective journalism [in Japan], they would have forced the ruling party to put more issues on the agenda. The media here play according to rules dictated by politicians.

Koizumi was very clever. The electorate, generally speaking, thinks in a very simple way. If you give them two issues, it is too complicated for them. That was the mistake of the Democratic Party. Koizumi said that there is only one issue – postal reform. You give the people a simple sentence, one issue and you will win the election.

JMR: Could last month’s election be described as Japan’s first presidential style contest?

OF: It could. It was Koizumi against Okada. If you look at the posters and television commercials, you had not five different parties, but five different leaders.

JMR: What did Okada and the Democratic Party of Japan do wrong to lose so catastrophically?

OF: Okada was criticized even within his own party. He didn’t know how to use the media, or how to project his opinions as the opposition leader. He couldn’t compete with Koizumi. He gave the appearance of being [a] serious politician without a sense of humor.

He was not as charismatic as Koizumi and didn’t give the impression that he was the right person to lead Japan now. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago he could have succeeded on a local level, but he isn’t a national leader.

JMR: Is Koizumi a new kind of Japanese leader?

OF: Koizumi is the product of the “presidentialization” of the prime-ministership. In the 1990s there were structural changes within Japanese politics, and changes in political culture. The people’s attitude towards leadership changed. They became ready to accept goal-orientated leaders rather than old-fashioned consensus-building leaders.

They were looking for somebody who will stand in front of the press and say, “I will do it. I don’t care what everybody thinks.” This was exactly the situation that paved the way for Koizumi.

JMR: How much of Koizumi’s success was down to the way he used the media?

OF: Everyone is talking about how Koizumi manipulated the media using sound bites. He creates catch-phrase politics, one-phrase politics. He decides the content and length of the phrases himself. He decides when he is going to meet the media. He asks them for the questions they will ask in advance, he talks for 4-5 minutes and then he leaves.

If there was real media here, they would say, “You are not going to decide what you are going to tell us, and we are not going to give you the questions in advance.” I’ve spoken with political reporters, and they hate it. But this is how they make their living so they don’t want to criticize it. If you talk to the editors, they say that this is not the way that a leader is supposed to behave in democracy; in a democracy you are supposed to answer questions that reporters give you.

JMR: How unusual was the tactic of bringing in “assassins” from outside to stand against the postal rebels?

OF: It is not completely new. In the Upper House they are traditionally called “talento giin” (TV personality Diet members). But in this case they are not just celebrities. If you look at those who were mobilized by the LDP to run against the rebels, they are professionals; talented people not “tarento.”

It’s an excellent thing. Traditionally, politicians had to have a degree in law, now they are coming from various areas of life. Now you can have a debate in the Diet. Koizumi picked them the same way that he selected his ministers in the first administration – one by one, not by considering the strengths of the LDP factions. He decided who he wanted to work with. He broke the rules.

JMR: Why did the most famous assassin, Internet entrepreneur Horie Takafumi, lose?

OF: His opponent Shizuka Kamei was known in the electoral district. He started as a local politician and he has worked there for the last 30 years. He has his organization of supporters. He contributes to the community. They talk about three things in Japan: “Jiban” (political base) “Kanban” (signpost) and “Kaban” (bag). Kaban is money.

Kamei also has personality; he knows how to perform in front of political supporters and the TV cameras. One TV program followed Kamei for several days. He appeared lecturing in a remote community in Hiroshima, his electoral district. When one person in the audience complained about the way the Construction Ministry handled a certain problem near their home, Kamei immediately instructed his secretary to call a high-ranking official in the ministry. Kamei spoke to the Ministry in front of the cameras and asked them to solve the problem as soon as possible.

Horie can’t do that. You have to have contacts and, of course, the ability to perform. Horie has the money so he can play politics. He’s a bad example of someone who uses their money to entertain themselves by running in an election.

JMR: Has Japanese politics really changed at the local level?

OF: My students and I conducted research during the recent election campaign in various ways. When we went to candidates’ speeches, we heard the same old style of politics. We heard candidates promise: “I will do something for the community. Please trust me. I will help you to build bridges here, establish schools here.” Candidates, especially LDP candidates, spoke about how they can contribute to the community – and then also mentioned Koizumi’s reform, political style and vision.

One female LDP candidate we got on video lectured for about 10 to 20 minutes, mostly about the resemblance between her name “Kyoko” and the city “Kyoto.” At the end she insisted that she was going to shake hands with everyone who came to the meeting.

Pork-barrel politics will probably continue forever. This is the old style of electioneering. You vote for the candidate whose face you saw, whose hand you touched. She talked a little in general about politics, but there was one key word in her speech, and in that of all the other LDP candidates – “Koizumi.” All the candidates used his reputation and plans to get elected.

JMR: Koizumi is due to finish his tenure as prime minister next September. Will the media participate in the debate to choose his successor?

OF: The media are very timid; they never choose the prime minister in Japan. They can criticize the prime minister, but they can’t choose him. They see their role more as influencing public opinion after the decision.

Also, since the 1990s, due to various factors, including the change in the election law and Koizumi’s own actions, LDP factions haven’t played their traditional role in the selection of future leaders. They have lost power and just become “study groups” to discuss policy.

At the moment, there isn’t even one likely candidate. Go to Nagatacho and ask political reporters, “Who do you think will be the next prime minister” and they say: “We don’t know.” It is hard to predict who will take the lead after Koizumi, although several names appear in the media from time to time. This has never happened in the history of modern Japanese politics because everyone knew that sooner or later one of the LDP faction leaders would become prime minister.

JMR: Will the LDP look for another charismatic and media-friendly leader like Koizumi?

OF: Yes, but the question is, will they find one? And the answer is no, because Koizumi is unique. He came at a time when the people needed a person like him, who can stand before the public and media and promise reform. Of course, he achieves that partly by manipulating the media.

He is not a family man, he’s divorced. Look at it from a psychological viewpoint. He is talking to the public like they are his wife and children. He’s the first politician like that in Japan. The press calls him “henjin” (weirdo). He is the strange politician, unpredictable. Reporters and politicians are always looking for his next surprise move. That’s how he dominates the political stage so adeptly.

JMR: Are you optimistic for reform in Japan?

OF: Postal reform will definitely take place. As for other reform, that’s a good question. Koizumi says, “This is the beginning,” but in the last four years there was no reform. Even his reform of the highway authorities failed.

People were surprised by this election; they weren’t expecting the LDP to win by such a large margin. Even the LDP politicians were surprised. Until this election we could have talked about two main parties in Japan, but now we are talking again about one.

As long as Koizumi remains in power things will remain the same. Next September the LDP will probably decide to try and extend his tenure as party president. But Koizumi is full of surprises so perhaps he will just retire. An even bigger, more interesting surprise will be if he quits the LDP to establish his own party – but that’s all speculation.

As for the LDP, they got so many this time that in the next election they will probably lose seats. In order to mobilize the vote they will need a charismatic candidate, maybe even a woman – someone who can talk to the public the way Koizumi does. Do they have such a candidate? I doubt it. Things may change as soon as Koizumi quits.

In Washington, D.C. PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) has been sharply criticized for its supposed liberal bias by Republicans, while Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party seems to constantly look the other way when it comes to scandal-tainted public broadcaster NHK.

Katsuji Ebisawa, a former chairman of NHK, resigned after embezzlement scandals involving its employees, although the nature of NHK has not changed much because “his henchmen still wield much influence in the newsroom,” according to Yasushi Kawasaki, a former political reporter at NHK and now a leading critic of the public broadcaster.

Like many leaders of other news organizations, Ebisawa used to report on major LDP factions. Kawasaki, however, said the disgraced NHK ex-chair was “not a political reporter, but a politician boosting his backroom influence.”

Akira Uozumi, a former reporter for Kyodo News and best-selling author, investigated NHK’s problems and also concluded, “NHK should not be considered to be a news organization” because of a symbiotic relationship with the LDP. Kawasaki agreed, though he said he had once worked for NHK, believing it was in fact a news organization.

Kawasaki was once a promising journalist at NHK, where he worked from 1959 to 1991. He covered the prime minister’s office as a top reporter and served as a bureau chief in Bonn, then West Germany. While covering Japanese politics, he very often posed hard questions to leaders. His style so unnerved some politicians, that on several occasions his worried-looking boss told him not to ask the Japanese officials anything at all. But Kawasaki ignored his boss’s plea because, he said, he was just doing what a journalist was supposed to do.

However, after his coverage of the faction of the late Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was pulled off the air because of pressure from the LDP, Kawasaki was forced out of a career track at the network. Kawasaki’s report claimed that, even though Tanaka was arrested on a charge of taking bribes from the Lockheed Corporation, his faction was still boosting its power, trying to exert political leverage over the outcome of the trial. In the end, Kawasaki was kicked out of the newsroom and transferred to the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute, where he was given no job, he said.

The public relations department at NHK insisted that although Kawasaki said he “was demoted, NHK places the right person in the right job in personnel transfer.”

His demotion was 30 years ago, and the scandals surrounding NHK have continued to affect its news practices, said Kawasaki, who has taught journalism at three universities and written several books.

Kawasaki agreed to discuss his history at NHK, the problems regarding the kisha club system, and the state of the Japanese media today.

JMR: How did you feel when you found you could no longer work in the newsroom?

YK: Never did I imagine that could happen to me. It was a bolt out of the blue. On the very first day at the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute, I was appalled to learn that there was no desk and no chair for me. I was given no job there. I had nothing to do.

I covered the prime minister’s office, and also became a bureau chief at NHK in Bonn, then West Germany. So, I was one of the top reporters among 800 staff members. I was doing the right thing. However, I was relegated to the office where there was no job, no desk and no chair. The demotion clearly sent me the message: I should quit. NHK flatly said that they “placed the right person in the right job.”

I had to go through a lot of hardships. I thought about leaving NHK so many times. But the reason I didn’t was an issue of my family. I had two children who were going to high school and university at that time. I wanted to support them. And also I was not confident that I could make ends meet by writing articles.

Seeing me depressed, a friend of mine handed me a book titled “Making News” by Martin Mayer. “Mayer’s argument in the book is exactly what you are saying,” he said. For example, Mayer argued that it is journalists, not authorities, who decide what is news, and that it is a public relations department that writes things as authorities want.

Then that friend came up with one idea: I myself could not write what I had to go through at NHK, however, I could translate the [book’s] same argument as mine. Then, I decided to follow his suggestion and start working on its translation with the help of another friend. Mayer’s book reassured me that I had done the right thing.

JMR: What made you start teaching journalism at universities?

YK: First of all, while I was at the institute, Japan Women’s University wanted me to teach one journalism class, just once a week. I translated Mayer’s book and got teaching experience at the university, which made it easy for me to teach at another school. Then, I was offered a full-time job from Otani Women’s University in Osaka after I retired NHK. Because I was also writing articles for a monthly magazine, one radio station in the city, MBS (Mainichi Broadcasting System), which read such articles, offered me a position as a commentator on politics and media for their evening program. I had been doing that for more than 10 years after NHK. After Otani Women’s University, I started teaching journalism at Sugiyama Women’s University in Nagoya.

JMR: You say in the book that reporters who cover a specific faction of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) are likely to be loyal to that faction. Why do you think that happens?

YK: They come to recognize that listening to a boss of the faction can be of benefit to them rather than listening to ones in the newsroom. That is because some factions have the power to control the top of news organizations. Unfortunately, such reporters tend to rise to a position of the upper echelon. Even if a news organization likes some reporter who covers one faction, a kingmaker like the late former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka or some other influential politicians do not like the reporter, they could say to the organization, “Fire him!” Then, that reporter will become someone like me.

JMR: You also say in the book that one of the most serious problems in the media is the leaders in newsroom.

YK: That’s right. There are still some young people who come to work in journalism with a sense of mission. But many bosses undermine their willingness to work. Then young workers gradually come to be more aware of politics in the newsroom and try to curry favor with their bosses.

JMR: Many people criticize NHK for its symbiotic relationship with the LDP. They point out that its news programs do not get comments from those who are critical of the cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Neither does NHK let them appear on its programs.

YK: Absolutely. They have a kind of list of political analysts, showing this one is a “guy to beware of.”

[NHK rejected such criticism, saying "NHK invites people with a variety of backgrounds such as those who are critical of the administration and who are not to our news programs and Sunday talk show, and we let them express themselves freely."]

Japan is a horrid country. You also see many problems of plagiarism. The other day, a director at TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc.) plagiarized many passages from major newspapers and used them for his columns on the Web site of TBS. [To make matters worse, at first that director apparently asked a freelance writer to take the rap for him.] Why so [much] plagiarism? That is because we have more people without aspirations.

Recently, my friends who used to work at NHK came to my home and said, “I keenly felt that the root of the whole problem at NHK is that workers get too high a salary.” I agreed. NHK has flourished because of its success in broadcasting satellite. Naturally, its employees want to keep that level of income and keep their living standards. Employees’ salaries used to be much lower 20 to 30 years ago.

JMR: You talk about plagiarism, journalists with no aspirations and the decline of the mainstream media. How do you think these have affected our society?

YK: That results in the rise of fascism, I would say. These days more people in newsrooms feel that as long as they listen to their bosses, they are fine. Even if some employees are doing their job, saying to themselves, “This may be wrong,” they think they are fine because others are also doing it. Fewer and fewer people have the courage to say, “I believe this is wrong.” But more and more people do their job, currying favor with their bosses. So they are sending more similar news [which is not critical of authorities] to the Japanese public. And the public unknowingly gets used to it. I believe such news causes more people to lack critical thinking skills in society. I have to say that lays down the root of fascism. These people tend to think as long as TV programs are funny, that’s fine. [Recently more and more comedians appear on TV programs including talk shows and news programs. Some comedians, like Akio Ishii, are former newscasters.]

JMR: Then Japanese people find themselves surrounded by many problems in society don’t they?

YK: That’s exactly what we are seeing right now. When I was working in the NHK newsroom, there were some staff members who said to me, “This does not make news without good footage.” I always retorted, “News doesn’t mean only something with footage.” Apparently there are no such arguments in the newsroom. Speaking of something in politics that makes news now, their answer is Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Before Mr. Koizumi, Japanese prime ministers did not often come to television and talk. But Mr. Koizumi does almost every day. He makes just a few remarks and leaves. The media let him say only what he wants to. Then, just because the Japanese top leader says something, they use that footage. When they continue to do this, the image of the prime minister gets more powerful. Then, more politicians also try to take advantage of TV to say only what they want to. Most of what they are saying is propaganda.

JMR: That sounds like NHK viewers are buying their propaganda. As you know, ironically, more people depend on NHK news for their information.

YK: Certainly. Moreover, some politicians are less willing to talk to print media these days. Instead, they are more willing to talk to broadcast media. Some politicians give reporters some information but tell them that that is not for the record. But later they talk about it on TV. Suddenly, that is no longer off the record. I believe that the media themselves are blamed for creating such odd situations. And it is NHK that spearheaded the trend.

I think it is the broadcast media that destroy Japanese political systems and ruin a society.

Livedoor shook up the media world in Japan this year with its controversial takeover of radio operator Nippon Broadcasting System. The ensuing battle between the Internet upstart and Nippon Broadcasting‘s parent, Fuji Television Network, stirred national debate about corporate alliances and the role of hostile takeovers, and Livedoor President Takafumi Horie emerged as a hero to some, a villian to others.

While Livedoor and Fuji TV reached a compromise agreement in April, Horie has continued to stay in the limelight in part because of his provocative language when discussing Japan’s traditional media. He has said, for example, that Livedoor and online media are going to “kill” traditional media, and he has slammed TV and newspaper coverage as patronizing, preachy and manipulative.

Livedoor launched its own news service last year in an attempt to change the way the media interact with the public. While it hired staff writers with professional journalistic experience, last December it began to register people as “public journalists” after they passed a one-day training course. (For a review of Livedoor’s program, see JanJan’s coverage by a participant in the class.)

Currently, about 200 people have been accredited by Livedoor as public journalists, and 800 more are waiting to join the group. Once someone is designated a public journalist, he or she can file stories with the Livedoor editors on topics of their choosing, although the editors make the final decision about what goes on the site.

One of the people presiding over this grand experiment is Mitsuyasu Oda, a veteran journalist who has worked in both Western and Japanese newsrooms and has has had a career-long interest in the role of public journalism. (In February, he posted a story about a citizen-based blog that emerged out of earthquake-stricken Tokamachi, Niigata Prefecture.)

As one of the most experienced journalists in the Livedoor newsroom and someone who has experience teaching, Oda is charged with training the public journalists. He has also become a magnet for criticism of the Livedoor news service. Readers flooded his blog with so many critical remarks that Oda decided not to accept any more comments.

But there is no doubt that the Livedoor team has created a popular news site. Livedoor’s main news page draws between 500,000 and 1 million visitors per day, Oda says, with anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000 of those readers clicking on the news pages where PJ, or public journalism, stories appear.

Oda says the site gets a lot of messages every day, many of which criticize the public journalism stories. Yet, he believes this is an important experiment that will allow a wider range of views than traditional media do. It just needs room to grow, he says. JMR talked to Oda about public journalism, Horie and Livedoor’s place in Japan’s media landscape.

Q: Tell us about how the public journalism project got started and how you got involved in the process.

A: The project originally started in early 2004 with a goal of creating a newspaper with a projected subscriber base of 300,000. The project failed because Livedoor faced a number of barriers when it tried to enter the industry: Japan’s system of kisha clubs (exclusive government press clubs) was one, and its newspaper disruption system (strict price and distribution controls) was another. Livedoor was also planning to buy a newspaper company, but the plan did not work out. Separately, the idea of creating an Internet media service using public journalists came up last May.

I was involved in research projects on the development of public journalism in the United States and South Korea. I have also been teaching courses on mass media at such universities as Meiji, Waseda and Digital Hollywood. That’s how I got involved in the project.

Q: Why did you think the concept of public journalism would work in Japan?

A: In the U.S., “public journalism” implies criticism of existing media. Many people still believe that participation in journalistic activities should be limited to professional journalists, but historically speaking, journalism was originally opened to anyone.

One reason a system to enable open participation did not grow has more to do with a lack of capital rather than the quality of journalists. The development of the Internet has created an environment that enables ordinary people to participate in the mass media.

In the case of South Korea, public journalism, as seen in OhmyNews, grew out of opposition to the government and the existing media. South Korea didn’t lift media restrictions until 1987, and this spurred the growth of media there. The country experienced the Asian financial crisis and subsequent changes under the supervision of the International Monetary Fund in the late 1990s. During these changes, the media were often viewed as conspiring with the government.

The situation in Japan is different because Japan has a history in which its media grew as an opposition to (government) authorities in the postwar period. So we did not want to imitate what OhmyNews has done. Japan already has a popular Web site in Channel 2. It also has plenty of personal Web sites and blogs, and some are quite public in their endeavors.

Channel 2 has a large quantity of comments that touch upon public issues, but there are also private messages with many slanders and character assassinations. These comments are not very organized, and users cannot easily access the information they want. Yet I think this is a kind of Internet journalism with vast influence despite its many flaws.

Many personal Web sites and blogs are quite insightful and based on deep understanding of social phenomena. But they often don’t have exposure unless the operators are famous to start with. What Livedoor tries to do is to use its high level of public recognition to give a forum for comments of a public nature.

Q: Over the past half year, the public journalism page has been criticized rather harshly. In order to respond to the criticism and to separate your personal views from Livedoor’s, you started your personal blog this spring. But you were deluged with comments yourself and had to stop accepting any more.

A: It was quite unexpected. I guess the criticism Livedoor’s public journalism receives partly reflects criticism of President Horie. He has made rather careless comments such as, “The Internet will kill existing media.” Sometimes, I think his ideas on new liberalism are also coming under attack.

Secondly, some of the criticism is based on envy. Livedoor’s registered public journalists are mostly ordinary people who have jobs elsewhere. Some are doctors, architects or public servants. Others are students, housewives or retired people. They also vary greatly in age from the 20s to the 60s. These people suddenly become journalists and gain influence. Some comments are not criticism per se, but are more like envy.

Thirdly, part of the criticism comes from people working in traditional media who are afraid that something new will infringe upon their professional territory.

Q: Under the current system, basically anybody can become a public journalist and file stories once they take the one-day training course.

A: Out of 200 public journalists registered, about 20 are now actively filing stories.

Q: What kind of criteria do you have for selecting the stories you use?

A: Stories need to deal with issues that are public in nature, but other than that there isn’t much limitation. One of the reasons we started the project was to pick up stories that the existing media do not pick up. We are looking into stories that are close to our daily lives and that public journalists feel they must let people know about.

By setting limitations on what we can run and what we cannot run, we may bump into the danger of limiting freedom of expression. Among other criticism we receive, some say the public journalists do not have good writing styles. But the style the traditional media use has evolved based on their history of writing for limited space. I wonder if that should still be the standard.

Q: How about fact-checking?

A: Currently, we are focused more on daily experiences that don’t require a lot of fact-checking, but we recently filed a story by a public journalist who witnessed a subway operator leaving the driver’s seat and walking around the compartment. The story questioned the choice of leaving the driver’s seat, even if many subways nowadays operate on automatic mode. Livedoor’s editorial team did extra work checking on the Transport Ministry and other sources before running the story.

Q: You’ve been running a story written by a plaintiff in a lawsuit who claims that her father was killed rather than committing suicide, as the police say he did.
Why did you decided to run a series of stories written by a person involved in a lawsuit?

A: In this case, the writer is not an independent agent. But there may be a possibility that the story has not been picked up by the major media because the writer’s father was (a scout for) a major Japanese baseball club, and this involves the media’s interest in broadcasting games or reporting about them. Of course, there is also a possibility that she may lose the case, but this does not mean we cannot run the story. We should not exclude a powerless voice.

Looking back at the Minamata disease (one of the worst cases of massive pollution and resultant disease, which broke out in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s), the damage was widespread partly because the media did not actively report on it. There are many issues like that.

Livedoor runs stories that the mass media do not report but are of public interest.

Q: But, shouldn’t it be a story that should remain on her own Web site, or a story that is investigated by Livedoor’s’ own staff, instead of her writing about it herself?

A: In order to answer that question, we need to go back to the question of what is journalism after all. In a broad sense, the term refers to writers and their views, which function as watch dogs checking the authorities. Those who say a story filed by a party who is involved in a particular issue is not journalism are complaining about two things: one is that the views are not neutral; and the other is that they are not objective.

I personally think a story is valid even if the writer is not in a position to be independent as long as the issue is of public interest.

Q: Do you agree with Mr. Horie’s view on journalism?

A: He does not know much about journalism. Mr. Horie agreed that he will not infringe on Livedoor News and will ensure the independence of the editorial department, even if the issue at hand involves criticism of him.

I once filed a story criticizing him. He just laughed at it. Mr. Horie is frustrated with the existing media and is hoping that more diverse choices will emerge. I agree with him on that much. Beyond that point, Mr. Horie does not seem to have clear ideas of how to achieve that goal.

Q: What are your goals?

A: Right now, we have 800 people waiting to be trained. We are trying to get them trained as soon as possible. By increasing the number of public journalists, we are planning to improve the quality of our stories overall and to enhance the diversity of our coverage. When the number of public journalists reaches 10,000, we should be able to function better and have more influence.