Rui Abiru of the Sankei Shimbun examines the Asahi Shimbun’s coverage of the Public Prosecutors Office Act revision bill and points out that the paper is once again using a mass-volume strategy, filling its pages with a single theme, just as it did during debates over security legislation, the State Secrets Protection Act, and the Moritomo-Kake issues. What is new this time is that Asahi, which usually questions information on the internet, is using Twitter posts as material for attacking the Abe administration.

May 14, 2020
Come to think of it, during deliberations over the security-related legislation and the State Secrets Protection Act, and also during the Moritomo and Kake Gakuen issues, the Asahi Shimbun developed its criticism of the administration by filling its pages with the same theme.
The following is from a serial column by Rui Abiru, one of the finest active journalists, published in today’s Sankei Shimbun under the title “Asahi Uses the Internet for Criticism of the Administration.”
Since I stopped subscribing to the Asahi six years ago in August, I had no idea what kind of reporting the Asahi is doing now, but I was appalled when I read his column.
The other day, after reading Shukan Asahi for the first time in a long while in the waiting room of a dentist and seeing that everything in it was forcibly connected to anti-Abe criticism, I wrote, “The Asahi is insane; the Asahi Shimbun is a group of madmen.”
The Asahi is even more insane than my essay suggested.
The emphases in the text, apart from the headings, are mine.
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I was appalled and thought, “Ah, they are repeating the mass-volume strategy again,” but then I reconsidered that, unexpectedly, perhaps they had also changed the method of attacking the Shinzo Abe administration.
This was after reading the May 12 morning edition of the Asahi Shimbun’s Tokyo head office edition.
A New Pattern
The pages of that day’s Asahi were entirely critical of the Public Prosecutors Office Act revision bill, which would extend the retirement age of prosecutors, beginning with the front-page top article, “Public Prosecutors Office Act Revision Bill: Protest Tweets Rapidly Expand” and “Prime Minister Poised to Enact It in the Current Diet Session,” and continuing with the top articles on pages 2, 3, 4, and 25, the front-page column “Tensei Jingo,” and the editorial.
It was an uproar as if, should the revision bill pass, heaven and earth would be overturned and Japan would perish.
Come to think of it, during deliberations over the security-related legislation and the State Secrets Protection Act, and also during the Moritomo and Kake Gakuen issues, the Asahi Shimbun developed its criticism of the administration by filling its pages with the same theme.
Each time, it shouted that the Constitution had been trampled on, that democracy was being destroyed, and that Japan was returning to the prewar era, attempting to guide public opinion, but before long things calmed down.
The title of the May 12 editorial, “An Outrage That Mocks the People,” is probably nothing especially unusual for Asahi readers, but merely a familiar expression they often see.
If that were all, it would end as the usual story.
However, what made me feel that this time there was a new pattern was that the Asahi, which ordinarily points out that information on the internet often includes items of unknown truth and many rumors, was using Twitter as material and grounds for attacking the administration.
“On Twitter, since the night of the 9th, posts saying ‘#I protest the Public Prosecutors Office Act revision bill’ have appeared one after another from famous figures such as actors and singers. Retweets have also been repeated, and the number of posts exceeded 6.8 million by shortly after 8 p.m. on the 11th.”
In addition to emphasizing the large number of posts in the front-page article in this way, the Asahi also took up these tweets in articles on pages 2, 4, and 25, and in Tensei Jingo.
The Asahi usually seems to regard the internet space, which is overflowing with criticism and protest directed at itself, as an enemy, but I am once again impressed that, when it can be used to criticize the Abe administration, it will stop at nothing.
Furthermore, in the article on page 26 of the May 13 edition, “LDP Turns Its Back on Voices of Protest,” it went so far as to criticize the government and ruling parties for casting a suspicious eye on the credibility of SNS posts as “the voice of the people.”
On the other hand, it disregards whether those who are sending out that “voice of the people” truly understand the purpose and reasons for the Public Prosecutors Office Act revision bill and are questioning society based on their own thoughts.
In the June issue of Monthly Seiron, now on sale, IT journalist Mutsumi Miyawaki points out the following.
“In recent mass media reporting, we find cases in which the source of information is labeled as ‘the internet,’ thereby branding it as ‘uncertain information,’ escaping the responsibility of proof, and even ‘misusing’ it as something with which they can ‘create news.’”
An Incomprehensible Logic
In its page 26 article, the Asahi critically quotes someone close to the Prime Minister as saying that “a figure such as one in twenty Japanese people having tweeted is almost impossible,” but surely they themselves do not truly believe that one in twenty people actually tweeted.
The article also introduces the results of an analysis by Associate Professor Fujio Toriumi of the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Engineering of 4.73 million tweets, including retweets, stating that “the number of accounts actually involved was about 588,000” and that “the spread caused by about 12,000 accounts, or 2 percent of them, repeatedly retweeting accounted for about half of the total.”
I cannot understand the Asahi’s logic.
(Editorial writer and political news department editorial committee member)