Political Science 241

Critical Reading Exercise #1

Carmen Mantecon
09/13/2016
Ofer Feldman

Reporting with Wolves: Pack Journalism and the Dissemination of Political Information

Thesis
The article sets how the relationships between Japanese reporters and politicians or
bureaucratic people and the information they report through the different practices are
manipulated.
Three Causal Propositions
Because Japanese surveys declared that Japanese prefer newspapers than other
media because they are sophisticated and provide more detailed information, therefore
Japanese media is highly concentrated and it can easily control the information influencing
peoples behavior. Moreover, the way the government controls media is through its
licensing system, which it is seen as an advantage for the government in order to control the
information. However, newspapers try to be politically neutral to avoid possible
intimidations or attacks.
Since the Kisha is a system where reporters expend their time as messengers to
elaborate the information and distribute it as political news, therefore each government
division provides a room where reporters should take all the possible information from their
respective organizations they are supposed to cover. Nevertheless, reporters only take
information from a very few number of members in the Diet. In addition, if Diet is in
session, reporters are divided into two groups, one takes the information from the lower
house, while the other takes it from the upper house. Another system similar to the Kisha is
the Yato which usually cover the opposition party.
Because clubs wanted to facilitate the gathering political information, therefore it
will do through press conferences and ban reporting. Nagata club is the press conference
where leaders give updates of their party. To obtain more information, reporters use the ban,
which consists in covering the movements of the leader. During the LDP government, the
idea was to have at least one reporter covering each of the five or six main factions in the
LDP (Feldman, 195). Furthermore, there are three methods of gathering: informal chat
sessions (kondan), meetings outside workplace, and informal chat on the way (shachu-kon).
However, reporters have access to some information but it has a price, they must follow
some rules according to the dependency on information sources, and the press club
regulations.
A Plausible Counterfactual
What would happens if the government remove its licensing system? If the
government would decide to rid the licensing system, it is probably that the information
will run fast and it would be more difficult for the government to control the filtered
information making government weaker and social dangerous. Furthermore, the
government will not control the freedom of speech, making people being interested in what
others think and convincing them about other government views. Moreover, it could be true

Political Science 241

Critical Reading Exercise #1

Carmen Mantecon
09/13/2016

that Japanese will consider social media more important than other media. Nowadays,
Internet is the easiest way of communication, at the same time is a weapon of manipulation.