Pensar na existência do Kisha Club no século XXI

Abstract

The Kisha Club was established as a group of journalists in 1890, and even today, it continues to play a central role in Japan’s journalism. As this dissertation shows, this club has three main features: ‘automatic access of the members to the authority’s primary information’, ‘very restricted rules imposed on the members’ and ‘the exclusiveness of the club’, which blocks non-member journalists and general citizens access to the information. The system of the Kisha Club helps the members and authorities to filter information which might arrive to the public, and restricts the activities of non-member journalists. Despite of Japan becoming a democratic country after World War II, official organisms, including the Prime Minister’s office, Ministries, police departments and political parties, adopt the Kisha Club system. Such adoption has brought sharp criticisms by international organizations for many decades. This study, besides the description of the Kisha Club system and its evolution process along decades, presents empirical work based on a questionnaire survey, interviews to journalists, and analyses of newspaper’s contents. While the questionnaire survey shows the habit of readers regarding their newspaper’s purchase, interviews and analyses of the newspaper’s contents reveal that the non-member journalists are discriminated regarding the access to the official sources. and that various journalists of Kisha Club tend to publish similar, or practically the same articles as other members, articles which are based on the information provided by the official entities.

Date of Award	7 Dec 2017
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Nelson Ribeiro (Supervisor)