Speak no evil

WITH a weak opposition, an election in the bag and buoyant approval ratings, the government of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, would hardly seem to have much to fight against. Yet it is waging an increasingly heavy-handed campaign to intimidate the media. Even pro-government journalists are crying foul.

Discreet interventions by politicians have long been customary. But bullying recently broke into the open when a bureaucrat turned political gadfly, Shigeaki Koga, accused the government on a television show of strong-arming the media by securing his removal from “Hodo Station”, a news show owned by TV Asahi, a liberal broadcaster. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) promptly proved Mr Koga’s point by grilling the programme’s producers over the outburst under the auspices of Japan’s broadcast law.