The Press as an Elite Power Group in Japan

Abstract

A lengthy field study in Japan using interviews and other sources and focusing on the nation's five leading national newspapers and Tokyo's major television stations finds evidence of much overlap between industry and the news media, through interlocking directorships and social club memberships, for example. Also journalists and other industrial leaders tend to be educated at the same exclusive universities and journalists also belong to professional clubs in which common values are shared. There already is a concentration of ownership of Japanese mass media and, through the mean sketched in this study, one can find how the mass media are integrated with other power centers of Japanese society.