Where Krauss’s case gets more difficult is in establishing which features of NHK’s environment are responsible for this curious mix. At one level, NHK journalists are recruited into a large organisation with particular ways of working that are embedded in an even larger and more constricting set of journalistic practices. The kisha kurabu (a kind of press corps attached to a particular institution) and the Japanese journalist-source relationship are rightly identified as institutions which discourage daring (or reckless) journalism. Krauss relates how “a reporter’s status… can depend on how far into the private quarters of the source’s residence he gains admittance. Free access to the official’s refrigerator, for example, gains one more respect”—but also binds the journalist into a particular relationship with his source. At another level, NHK executives are more-or-less polished political operators who head an important public organisation and who consequently face enormous political pressure. Their success or failure in reaching the top posts in NHK depends on their links with particular factions or tribes within the LDP, tying executives into a particular relationship with elected representatives.

There is no simple answer to the question of which level is responsible for NHK’s particular style of news. Each level interacts with the other. Top level executives “had to accommodate the ruling party”. Because of the Socialist presence in the Diet and the leftist Nipporo union within NHK, they could not do so by broadcasting news overtly biased in the LDP’s favour. The news-gathering structures inherited from the newspapers provided a means of negotiating this dilemma. Krauss’s argument is that, by adopting the kisha and other formalised structures, NHK was able to take the sting out of the news problem, freeing it from greater control by the LDP-state.

There’s a whiff of functionalism in the way these organisational structures enter the explanation of NHK’s output: because they were useful to NHK, they were adopted by NHK. Of course, executives do not like to admit that they sacrificed any part of their organisation’s autonomy, and so are unlikely to admit that there was a conscious plan to adopt particular structures to safeguard NHK from interference. Absent such a statement, Krauss’s explanation of NHK’s news output is the best analysis of a mature public service broadcaster that I have seen. The book is not future proof—TV Asahi seems to represent a more pugnacious brand of television journalism—but Krauss’s work should be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand NHK in particular and public service broadcasting in general.