The BBC is a partisan battleground – why does Japan’s public broadcaster escape the same fate?
By Steven David Pickering, Honorary Professor, International Relations, Brunel University of London
Martin Ejnar Hansen, Reader in Political Science, Brunel University of London
Yosuke Sunahara, Professor, Kobe University
Public service broadcasters are supposed to be the most trusted news outlets in democratic societies. Funded through models like licence fees and free from advertising, they are meant to stand apart from commercial media.
But our new study of trust in the BBC in the UK and NHK in Japan shows that reality is more complicated. Politics and ideology divide trust in public broadcasters in very different ways.
Like the BBC, NHK is a nationwide broadcaster with a mandate to serve…
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Thursday, October 16, 2025