The vocation of journalism in Japan is not exactly the same as it is in the West. The "kisha club" system makes reporters beholden to the bureaucrats and politicians they cover rather than to the public they're supposed to serve, while the Japanese corporate tradition of on-the-job training means that recruits fresh out of university are thrust into news-gathering operations with little or no training. In the West, for better or worse, journalism has become more of a calling than a profession, at least since the Watergate era. In Japan, it is first and foremost a job, meaning that a reporter's main responsibility is not to the truth but to getting the work done.

A good illustration of this point was provided by the Asahi Shimbun in its Sept. 16 edition. The paper used three full pages to explain the results of an in-house investigation into two articles it printed in late August that were based on information a 28-year-old reporter had made up. Three pages is a lot of newsprint to spend on self-correction, but the report revealed a lot of inside information about the news-gathering process at a major Japanese daily.

During the month leading up to the Sept. 11 general election, the media were speculating about which politicians would form alliances. The political news section at Asahi's Tokyo headquarters received word that former Liberal Democratic Party policy chief Shizuka Kamei had met with Nagano Gov. Yasuo Tanaka to discuss creating a new party. On Aug. 18, the section's desk sent an e-mail to the Nagano bureau requesting any information related to the rumored meeting.