Ian Hargreaves writes in his 2003 book Journalism: Truth or Dare:
…But the workings of Japanese news media are barely recognizable to journalists from the United States or Britain… Japanese journalists, for example, are bound together in a network of a thousand ‘press clubs’, all linked to major institutional or industrial sources of power and therefore of news, and designed to ensure that both sides play by a set of unofficial rules. This is, in essence, a form of self-regulation, designed to avoid embarrassment and misunderstanding, but which in the opinion of its critics neuters and homogenizes Japan’s journalism through the management of "an unchallenged monopoly on the flow of news or any other form information." (pg. 57-58)
…France, for example, has a statutory law to protect privacy, along with a culture in which exposure of personal relationships is not regarded as the staple diet of even the most popular journalism.
Adam Michnik, a leader of the fight to democratize Poland, wrote up ten commandments for the rebirth of journalism. The first one ran: "Our God, who led us out from bondage, has two names: Freedom and Truth. To this God we subordinate ourselves completely. If we bow to other gods — the state, the nation, the family, public security — at the expense of Freedom and Truth, we shall be punishable with the loss of reliability. Without reliability, one cannot be a journalist."
A P.R. company in Russia in September 2001 "offered newspaper editors money to publicize the opening of a non-existent hi-fi shop. Of the twenty-one titles approached, thirteen obliged." (pg. 73)
Academic Kevin Glynn said the tabloid media "multiplies and amplifies the heterogenous voices and viewpoints in circulation in contemporary culture, giving rein to many that are typically excluded from the dominant regime of truth… The shrill and revulsive response to tabloid media form ‘respectable’ journalism and other elite social quarters indicates the extent to which their popularity threatens officialdom’s power to regulate the discursive procedures through which we make sense of society and ourselves. ‘Serious’ journalism is far more concerned with controlling, organizing, and ordering the hierarchy of voices it admits into its discurse reportoir than is tabloid news, whose contents are driven by ratings and circulation." (Pg. 132-133).
Ian Hargreaves writes:
Glynn brings to his advocacy for tabloid journalism a specifically political case, involving the election to the governorship of Minnesota in 1998 of Jesse "The Body" Ventura, a former professional wrestler and radio talk-show "shock jock." Glynn sees the very high turnout in this election (over 60 per cent, compared with less than 50 per cent even for presidential races) resulting from Ventura’s fluency with tabloid-style communication, that enabled him to assemble an extraordinary coalition of supporters, many of them normally excluded from the political domain.
