Published on August 28, 2017.
This article examines Asahi Shimbun’s extraordinary media bias during the Ibaraki gubernatorial election, where it devoted massive front-page coverage to support a specific candidate while virtually ignoring the election result.
It exposes selective reporting and agenda-driven journalism.

2017-08-28
Anyone who looked at the front page of the Asahi Shimbun today must have been utterly astonished.
It appears that Asahi Shimbun is in fact a newspaper that gives no thought whatsoever to regional affairs.
Before the Ibaraki gubernatorial election, I published the following article.
“Three major articles prominently featured on the front page of the Sankei Shimbun were not carried at all.
Sankei’s major headlines were: 1. Forced labor — the foreign minister directly protests; the July foreign ministers’ meeting and this month’s visit to South Korea postponed. 2. Toshiba’s semiconductor business to be sold to the WD camp. 3. Chinese military aircraft off the Kii Peninsula, an ‘unusual flight’; the Air Self-Defense Force scrambled.
None of these articles appeared in the Asahi Shimbun.”
On that day, Asahi Shimbun suddenly devoted a massive spread from the front page through the second page to a special feature claiming that 52 percent opposed the restart of nuclear power plants, citing its own opinion poll.
The losing candidate in the Ibaraki gubernatorial election, Hashimoto, age seventy-one, had courted Asahi Shimbun by including opposition to nuclear restarts in his campaign platform.
Until August three years ago, I used to pick up a newspaper every morning.
Recently, I almost never do.
This morning, having woken earlier than planned, I unusually picked one up.
I could not believe my eyes.
Nowhere on the front page of the Asahi Shimbun was the result of the Ibaraki gubernatorial election reported.
Thinking this impossible, I checked the social affairs section, but found nothing.
Exasperated, I looked at the Nikkei newspaper.
It also had nothing on the front page.
(Indeed, Nikkei seems to be a paper that aligns itself with Asahi, or rather aspires to become Asahi.)
When I opened the second page, the result was reported, though not prominently.
I then opened the Asahi Shimbun once more.
It was printed on the second page in a completely inconspicuous manner.
After using such an enormous amount of space in an attempt to secure Hashimoto’s victory, Asahi Shimbun—
charitably speaking—must today be in a funeral-like state internally, having seen its attempt to bring down the Abe administration thwarted.
Put bluntly, it has exposed to the entire nation its habit of ignoring and not reporting facts inconvenient to itself, the same habit that led it to completely disregard the testimony of Mr. Kado and Mr. Hara.
My impression this morning was simply that this is an utterly chaotic newspaper company.
What on earth has become of the minds of the people who work at this company.
China, South Korea, the GHQ press code, Marxism, and pseudo-moralism must infest the minds of those who make up the Asahi Shimbun.
Those who, unaware of this, have believed the blatant lie that it is Japan’s leading quality paper and continued subscribing should stop immediately.
That is, unless they wish to cultivate the same parasites in their own minds, though it is hard to imagine such people exist.