TOKYO Japan's new Prime Minister Naoto Kan will have to keep the country's powerful media on side if he wants to escape the fate of many of his predecessors and see out more than a year in office.

Kan was elevated to the role after Yukio Hatoyama resigned last week - the fourth premier in as many years to leave under a cloud - over money scandals and a dispute about a US airbase that saw him cave in to Washington's demands and renege on an election pledge.

Breaking with convention, Hatoyama did not give a final press conference.

After answering reporters' questions almost every morning and afternoon of his nine-month stint in office, he may have had enough of journalists.

In his final doorstep interview, less than a year after a sweeping electoral victory, the centre-left leader said in a trembling voice “The Japanese public no longer listens to the voice of my administration.”

A barrage of voter polls by newspapers, TV networks and news agencies in Japan's highly competitive media landscape had relentlessly charted his decline from sky-high approval ratings in excess of 70 per cent after his election win to the nadir of 17 per cent last week.

Most observers agree that the scholarly and often aloof political blue-blood had dug his own grave, especially by mishandling the row over the US base on Okinawa island and by baffling voters with his often abstract statements.

But many political experts also consider the Japanese media an increasingly tough audience - which allows politicians ever shorter honeymoons, quickly seizes on 'verbal gaffes', and is happy to speculate on when premiers will resign until the media chorus can become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

“When media polls go into a downward spiral on a national leader, he gets trapped and cannot get out of it,” said politics professor Tomoaki Iwai of Nihon University.

In Hatoyama's case, “major media obviously shifted their editorial tone against Hatoyama in the spring,” said Sadafumi Kawato, professor of politics at Tokyo University.

“They kept implying his inevitable resignation and influencing public opinion through polls.”

Muneyuki Shindo, professor of political science at Chiba University, said Japanese media were “impatient” and aggressively searched for faults as soon as Hatoyama took office, having ended a half a century of conservative rule.

One of the toughest parts of the prime minister's job are the twice daily interviews with large groups of reporters who wait outside politicians' residences or offices to fire off a few brief questions.

The practice was started by charismatic and media-savvy former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, who lasted an unusually long five years.

But while lion-haired Koizumi was a natural media performer who managed to charm journalists and voters alike, premiers after him have often delivered more wooden performances and tied themselves up in verbal knots.

“When you have to speak publicly twice every day, anybody would run the risk of contradicting themselves,” Shindo said, after premiers in recent years have been attacked for policy flip-flops in their off-the-cuff remarks.

When pressure grew on Hatoyama over the US base row, he began taking only one question in the morning - a move that was instantly condemned by his press corps, the Kantei (Prime Minister's Office) press club.

Other observers point at a pack mentality in the mainstream media that can easily lead to an unspoken consensus, especially between reporters who work for large media organisations with similar political leanings.

The doorsteps are “one form of collective journalism”, said Takehiko Yamamoto, professor of international politics at Waseda University.

“They are all institutional reporters, not like in the United States or Europe, where you see many independent journalists. The staff reporters tend to write articles loyal to their company's opinions.”

Kazuo Nagasaki, a former political journalist with the Mainichi Shimbun daily, criticised the modern doorstep interview as a superficial practice convenient for television crews in search of a quick soundbite.

“When I was a reporter, there was no such practice,” said Nagasaki, 66, who covered national leaders for decades until early 1990s. “When we wanted to ask prime ministers about something, we went straight to their office and asked.”—AFP