The term ¡°fake news¡± was used in so many different situations this year that it no longer describes an agreed upon concept but rather anything you don¡¯t agree with. This is why the U.S. press has had a difficult time making sense of its president¡¯s conflation of cynical policy aims with his own deranged self-esteem.
Aside from players with axes to grind on either side of the ideological divide, outlets such as The Washington Post managed to keep facts in sight and as a result did some of their best work in years.
Matters aren¡¯t as problematic in Japan because the mainstream media here rarely acts in an adversarial capacity. Japan¡¯s masukomi (mass communication) is on the same power continuum that runs through the country¡¯s political and economic worlds, but the fact that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has bet the nation¡¯s well-being on the Manichean delusions of U.S. President Donald Trump should make all Japanese reporters and editors with a conscience worry about the state of their souls.
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