In Japan, press clubs known as 'Kisha Clubs' dominate the media landscape - often printing what they are told by state officials in exchange for access to high-level sources and press conferences.Despite convincingly winning December's snap election, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic policies - known as Abenomics - have not been a runaway success and his plans to restart the country's nuclear industry are still overshadowed by the Fukushima disaster.In January 2015, Abe pledged $200m in non-military aid to the countries fighting Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Middle East. Some Japanese believe that Abe's determination to play a role in the fight against ISIL threatens Japan's long-standing pacifist constitution.But Japanese journalists have been, in the main, reluctant to embarrass their political leaders. Self-censorship is a problem in many countries, but in Japan, it goes one step further, into the realm of collective self-censorship.So when a critic of Abe's policies on the Middle East appeared live on a mainstream news channel and declared "I am not Abe" it caused a national stir - and proved to be a bad career move.The Listening Post's Will Yong reports on journalism in Japan and Shinzo Abe's 'medianomics'.
