Hiwatari-sensei: I did not mean to imply that being one type of "dog" was
completely mutually exclusive to being another. I meant these as roles or
"functions" the press can and usually does play in all countries, but each press
in each country has different perhaps emphases on the different roles. In the US
we here mkuch about the proper role of a free press being the "watchdog" but in
fact, most of the time, the US press is probably more of a guide dog or lapdog
too. But I do think that the Japanese press plays the watchdog role less
frequently, and the lapdog role more frequently, than the press in the US.

I agree that the media's definition of "news" and thus "facts" can have an
influence on how much of a watchdog role the media plays and also that the
Japanese media has a definition of news [especially the printed press; less so
with Kume these days on tv] that emphasizes "fact" transmission rather than
presentation of a diversity of opinion about facts. This I think goes back to
the history of journalisma nd the relationship to the state in the two
countries. After early Meiji, I would argue, the press decided that it was
commercially expedient to deemphasize political controversy, and also the press
laws under the Meiji-prewar regimes made it politically wise also to stick to
the 'facts." Add to that the norms and practices of the kisha kura-bu as you
mention and you have a different form of journalism and a different press-govt
relations in Japan than in the US. In the US, journalist tradition--encouraged
by press owners who saw their papers as mediums for their own political opinions
[e.g. Hearst] --defined balance as incorporating opinion into news stories but
that was ok as long as you had more than one opinion and made an effort to
balance out different opinions if it was a "news " story. Indeed, a Mansfield
Center report on US Japanese press coverage a few kyears ago found that the
Japanese and American press reached "balance" in the news in different ways: the
Japanese news stories avoided anything but "the facts"; the American news
stories contained opinions of sources, but these were usually balanced by the
opposite opinions of different sources.

Based on this and other data from that study, I've argued that one of the
sources of friction in US-Japan relations is the different strength and
weaknesses of press coverage in the two countries: American citizens get all
sorts of opinions about Japan, but not enough empirical fact to "test" those
opinions against reality; Japanese citizens get incredible amounts of
information and facts about the US, but not enough diversity of opinion to be
able to put those facts into broader context. For example, Americans hear Japan
is 'closed" to American trade as one opinion but don't get much detail to know
what this means, so they assume it means Japan has high tariffs [mistakenly];
Japanese see or hear about a few Congressmena nd women bashing a Toshiba radio
or that a Congressman has introduced an anti-Japanese bill into Congress and
assume this is somehow important in American politics [it isn't].

Best, Ellis