Britain’s an interesting case, but I don’t think it makes the point you think it does. Yes, there’s a censor, but the real reason all the newspapers report the

Britain’s an interesting case, but I don’t think it makes the point you think it does. Yes, there’s a censor, but the real reason all the newspapers report the same thing at the same time is cultural a) newspaper ownership is concentrated amongst a very small group of people, most of whom are billionaires b) they employ people who they trust to do the right thing c) journalism in the U.K. operates a revolving door with the conservative party’s communications division d) partly as a result of that and partly as a result of falling revenues, most journalist's idea of what good journalism is consists of asking two people what they think and reporting what they say e) this makes them extremely dependent on the lobby system, which is pretty similar to press clubs e) Blair set a precedent for cutting funding to the BBC if it said things it didn’t like, and the current government hasn’t hesitated to threaten to do it again f) this culture is so ingrained it has spread even to those publications that theoretically shouldn’t be affected. So the situation in Japan is pretty similar to that in the U.K. You just need to identify the levers.