But in keeping with the agenda to maintain the status quo, companies, officials and products are rarely mentioned. No analysis is attempted. Follow-ups are almost never done, and the stories themselves surfaced from official channels, not through any digging by the newspapers themselves. And all this sounds good, which is obviously the point. But bear in mind the newspaper does have its responsibilities as well as its agenda.
Issues are much like people, they live and die.
They flourish in the right climate or they wither. And therein lies the rub. Held in February was the funeral service for the honorary chairman of the Yomiuri Shimbun , Yosoji Kobayashi. With flowers in hand arrived six former Prime Ministers, the sitting Prime Minister, eleven Cabinet ministers and a slew of business, bureaucratic and other miscellaneous poobahs. But not to be completely left out, the rank and file readership also got theirs.