In the global catastrophe caused by the novel coronavirus, the first responsibility that must be questioned is that of the Chinese Communist Party. Yet NHK’s Watch 9 has failed to confront China’s concealment and propaganda, instead featuring an anti-Trump commentator such as Ian Bremmer and continuing arbitrary reporting that cannot be called public broadcasting. This essay criticizes the abnormality of NHK’s reporting while referring to TV Tokyo WBS commentator Takita’s coverage of China’s fabricated footage and propaganda efforts in the United States.

May 6, 2020

China is desperately spreading false propaganda so that it will not be sued for damages by the entire world for its own grave errors, and the posture of these two men is the other side of the same coin.

Few Japanese citizens would object to the view that NHK is, in substance, Japan’s state-run broadcasting station.
Few Japanese citizens would also object to the view that Watch 9, its news program, is one of NHK’s principal news programs.
Now, the world is being struck by the greatest catastrophe since the end of the war.
Yet what is extremely strange about the response of Japan’s media and some Japanese politicians is that they continue to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil toward a fact that even an elementary school student can understand: that this catastrophe originated from China’s Wuhan virus research institute.
This is not only Japan’s problem.
For some reason, there are countless pro-China politicians and scholars throughout the world.
Yet when speaking about this catastrophe, the president of NHK gives a man like Arima a position like that of a judge, and leaves the selection of speakers to his arbitrary judgment.
Whenever something happens, he drags out a young man such as Ian Bremmer.
This Ian Bremmer is probably a supporter of the Democratic Party and one of the leading anti-Trump figures.
Many discerning people must remember that, when Trump was elected, he appeared at NHK’s request and commented with a face as if the world had come to an end.
I want to say this to Maeda, the current president of NHK.
But since he, too, is probably one of the children of the Asahi Shimbun, raised by reading that newspaper, it would be meaningless.
Therefore, I want to say this to the Japanese people.
If NHK is, in substance, Japan’s state-run broadcasting station, and if it truly wants to have people speak about the future world, is it not its duty to connect at least the leaders of the G6 online, or to connect with them one by one and interview them, and then report this to the Japanese people?
How long does NHK intend to allow such arbitrary conduct, letting a man like Arima select someone like Ian Bremmer and have him speak?
NHK is always saying, is it not, that it is a public broadcaster.
Then how can Arima, who is nothing more than an employee, arbitrarily use a private individual who is merely a supporter of the U.S. Democratic Party and one of the standard-bearers of anti-Trump opinion,
and have him speak at length about such foolishness as “the individual rather than the state,” something that would delight the foolish politicians of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan?
We must no longer allow such an attempt to brainwash the Japanese people.
If NHK is Japan’s state-run broadcaster, then what it should do first is ask the prime ministers and presidents of the G6 in the manner described above.
This is, of course, on the premise that NHK insists on seeking opinions from others, from people in other countries.
For Arima and Ian Bremmer, who are absolutely nothing in this context, to speak about the future world on the principal news program of Japan’s state-run broadcaster is an entirely abnormal posture.
From the standpoint of the public broadcasting they constantly invoke, it is something that should never be allowed.
It is elementary-school level common sense that NHK should first ask Macron, Merkel, Johnson, Shinzo Abe, Trudeau, and Trump.
Above all, what is worst about Arima, Bremmer, and those like them is that they have absolutely no perspective on the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, or on how long its dictatorship will continue.
They have no perspective on whether it might possibly collapse within the next few years.
What exactly was this Wuhan virus?
Why did it become such a catastrophe?
Above all, they have no perspective that China bears responsibility.
China itself is desperately spreading false propaganda so that it will not be sued for damages by the entire world for its own grave errors,
and the posture of these two men is the other side of the same coin.
Among the people now appearing as commentators on television news programs, the only truly decent person is Mr. Takita of TV Tokyo’s WBS.
That is probably because he is one of the very few people who has not been caught in China’s honey traps or South Korea’s money traps and honey traps.
He alone shows no deference toward China.
Last night, Mr. Takita reported that China’s lies were beginning to become an issue in Europe and the United States, and he aired two examples.
The first footage was something I had never seen before.
When China sent a medical team to Italy, the news footage China distributed to the world was fabricated.
It showed residents of an Italian city leaning out from their balconies, expressing gratitude to China and singing the Chinese national anthem.
That news footage was entirely fabricated.
The second example was the outrageous propaganda case involving the Chinese consul general in Michigan and the speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, which was exposed in a scoop by a Financial Times reporter and which this column introduced on the very day it appeared.
The fact that Arima dragged out Ian Bremmer and ran toward an outrageous arbitrary use of the public airwaves must have been caused by an urgent need to conceal, for China’s sake, the facts revealed by Mr. Takita of Nikkei.
Ian Bremmer is probably a man with the same circumstances as Arima.
Of course, tonight’s Watch 9 did not report at all the news footage that WBS reported last night.
It has also not reported at all, even now, the Wisconsin case.
What it does report, day after day, is only the line that President Trump is attacking China over the Wuhan virus because of calculations related to the presidential election.
That is the line of China, that is, the CCP.
In other words, it is reporting exactly in accordance with the guidance documents from CCTV inside NHK’s headquarters and from the Chinese ambassador in Moto-Azabu.
That alone it continues to do, day after day.