They only stop talking to you through official channels. There will always be leakers, disgruntled employees and others willing to talk to you anonymously or unofficially. Not to mention that you can talk to people and ask questions without announcing that you're a reporter. This used to be called investigative journalism.
I would just say it's not as profitable. Many independent journalists seem to do investigative journalism on the cheap. Wikileaks comes to mind. Saying it' too expensive, to me, denotes that they are unable to do it and be a sustainable enterprise, which is probably not accurate.
> They only stop talking to you through official channels. There will always be leakers, disgruntled employees and others willing to talk to you anonymously or unofficially.
You cannot sustain beat reporting by relying on leakers and disgruntled employees. Furthermore, anonymous sources are not credible (ie, the news-consuming public largely does not trust them).
Most of the time, simple facts need to be reported and the only way to do that is by talking to credible sources that have been developed over time. Not all journalism is investigative - what happens when you want to report on a new housing development but you've burned all your sources because you only talk to leakers and disgruntled employees? Or you're reporting on a crime and need to talk to some cops?
> Not to mention that you can talk to people and ask questions without announcing that you're a reporter.
City officials are pretty well trained to know when the person on the other end of the line is a reporter. Not to mention how incredibly unethical this is (won't even start on the legal issues here).
The US is a federalized country with quite big cultural differences between states, and at least alternates between two major parties, and frequently shifting administrations. You can at most get canceled by one side. Japan is centralized and monolithic to an extent that really has no parallel in any other democratic country.
Singapore?
The press doesn’t just toe the official line, they actively attack opposite viewpoints.
Bonus points: the TV/radio wing has the delightfully Orwellian name of MediaCorp, and MediaCorp Radio at one point had the amazing slogan "MediaCorp Radio: Your choice!".
As an example, John Tan was disqualified for standing as a candidate to the parliament in 2019 because he posted a Facebook post in support of an activist who posted than Malaysian courts were more independent than Singapore ones in trials involving politicians.
in theory there's no problem with this, after all if they represent the plurality ... just as in theory many political systems should work just fine.
and it's certainly possible that this is what the vast majority of people there wants, so it might score 100% on "democracy", even if there are certain very obvious problems (let's say their insane justice system, or the simple fact that their population is both shrinking and ageing)
Trump actually had a reporter's white house press credentials revoked and a court reversed it.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-reporter/u-s-ap...
The court does recognize the government has a right to prevent unruly behavior. But once it creates a forum with rules on who attends; it simply can not target those who disagree with it's speech.
Yes, American agencies have stonewalled in the past but the 1st and 14th amendments do place restrictions and practices the governments must follow or their acts can be blocked and that American courts do uphold. As far as I know most countries do not have these practices.