Last weekend, former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, prior to her official announcement to stand as a candidate in the upcoming House of Representatives election, held a press conference; or, more exactly, two press conferences -- one for the national newspapers and one for the TV networks. No magazines were allowed, and print reporters couldn't use tape recorders. As for content, she expressly forbade "heckling (yaji)" and "mudslinging (chusho)" during the press conference. Such a proscription would normally be unnecessary, but Tanaka obviously wanted to pre-empt any possible attempts to sidetrack the press conference into areas she didn't want to talk about. Everyone complied.

TV Asahi's morning news show, Super Morning, represented the media's disgruntlement with all of this by listing Tanaka's imperious demands and showing an angry photographer being barred from the proceedings. However, they reported the press conference itself straight, just the way she wanted it. Whatever TV Asahi's reservations about Tanaka as a politician or a person, they know that whenever she's scheduled to appear on the air ratings go up, so they toe the Tanaka line just like everybody else.

If you want an example of how the obsession of networks with ratings adversely affects the news, this is a pretty good one. But if you want an example of how this obsession adversely affects all of TV, you won't find a better one than an incident revealed two weeks ago involving a Nippon TV producer bribing household-ratings monitors to watch his shows.