Mismanaging media Mori's worst blunder?

By Linda Sieg

TOKYO (Reuters): Whoever succeeds Yoshiro Mori as Japan's next prime minister should learn one key lesson from the drawn-out drama that looks set to end with his departure from the stage: Don't underestimate the power of the press.

Mori's predecessor, the late Keizo Obuchi, took office with rock-bottom ratings and a reputation as a bumbler, but parlayed that into an image as an popular "Everyman", whose aptitude for crafting consensus helped get things done where others failed.

The contrast between Obuchi -- whose media mastery caused some to dub him Japan's first modern premier -- and Mori could hardly be greater, a difference even his supporters acknowledge.

"He says things straight out and doesn't think enough about whether he might be misunderstood," Shizuka Kamei, policy chief in Mori's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) said on Sunday.

Known in diplomatic circles as a genial chap but saddled with a domestic reputation as a gaffe-prone policy lightweight, the burly former journalist got off on the wrong foot as soon as he was tapped by party elders for the post last April.

Shortly after he took office, Kyodo news agency blared a headline that hinted at trouble ahead between Mori and his nemesis, the media: "Mori suggests okay to deceive media over movements," the news wire's headline read.

Provoking that outburst was a comment by Mori suggesting that he saw nothing amiss with aides or relatives deceiving media who report on the minutiae of the prime minister's daily schedule, including when he rose and when he went to bed.

The timing of the remark seemed particularly inept, given that ruling party barons were under heavy fire for keeping the public in the dark for almost a day while they huddled secretly to select a successor to Obuchi, who had been rushed to hospital after suffering what proved to be a fatal stroke.

Voters, however, seemed prepared at first to give Mori the benefit of the doubt, handing him support levels of around 40 percent in surveys soon after he took office.

Then, just one month into his tenure, Mori set off a media furor when he said Japan was a "divine nation with the emperor at its core," a comment critics said echoed the state Shinto religion declaring the emperor divine and used to justify Japan's military aggression in Asia before and during World War II.

Mori strongly denied wanting to revive state Shintoism and apologized for causing a fuss, but media never let him off the hook -- a stance some commentators now question.

"Mr. Mori's problem is that his opponents, and the media, have succeeded in portraying his expressions of these views as gaffes, not as debatable convictions with a context, turning their image of him as a gaffe-happy dimwit into a self-fulfilling prophecy," said an editorial in the English-language Japan Times.

To be sure, Mori and his associates provided maximum fuel for the media fire.

Not only the establishment media but their tabloid cousins scented blood in the tribulations of Mori and his cabinet, and the penny populist press can be credited with toppling his close aide and key cabinet minister Hidenao Nakagawa last October.

Nakagawa was forced to resign after allegations swirled for weeks in the tabloids of a scandal involving a mistress, drugs and right-wing extremists.

Then a bribery scandal ensnared one of the "Gang of Four" who selected Mori as top leader and forced a third cabinet minister to resign over ties to the firm at the center of the affair.

When Mori stayed on the golf course after learning that a U.S. submarine had sunk a Japanese trawler carrying schoolboys, domestic media went into a frenzy.

With Mori's slender public support slashed to single-digit levels by February, powerbrokers in his ruling camp grew frantic to ditch him before a July Upper House election, defeat in which could signal the beginning of the end of their reign.

That wish looked set to become reality after Mori reached a weekend deal with LDP powerbrokers to move forward a September election for party president, a post that typically ensures the premiership because of the ruling camp's majority in parliament.

The weekend pact, unanimously deemed a de facto statement of intent to resign by domestic media, including staid public broadcaster NHK, capped a week marked by daily reports of Mori's imminent departure and irate denials by the man himself.

On Monday, Mori's battle with the media raged on as he denied the word "resignation" had ever crossed his lips.

"Media have been writing all along that it was a done deal and they can't change that," he told a parliamentary panel. "So they had to write it was a de facto statement of intent to resign."