Ahead of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election, media coverage of Prime Minister Abe’s Akihabara speech selectively amplified a small group of protesters to fabricate the impression of rising anti-Abe sentiment. This chapter argues that ideological bias in media editing poses a greater danger than political pressure.

2017-08-01
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Ideology More Dangerous Than Pressure.
Kato.
Speaking of selective editing, the Prime Minister’s speech in front of Akihabara Station before the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election is a prime example.
A group holding banners reading “Abe, resign” and chanting slogans was positioned next to the press area.
The media focused exclusively on that group, creating the impression that “anti-Abe voices are growing stronger.”
Before the election, television repeatedly aired only their footage together with images of Prime Minister Abe pointing and saying “people like this.”
There were clearly people orchestrating this, and although their numbers were not that large, only that portion was cut out and presented as “Look how much anti-Abe sentiment is rising.”
Suenobu.
It’s exactly the same as during the security legislation debate.
At that time, programs like “Hodo Station” even dispatched reporters to the scene, reporting with excitement, “The atmosphere here is incredible.”
Kato.
Back then, the people gathered in front of the Diet were mostly elderly — like a reunion of participants from the 1970 security protests — yet the media showed only the young SEALDs members at the front and kept featuring them.
Suenobu.
I also went out to cover it on Fridays, and sometimes I even spotted people thinking, “Isn’t that a senior from my network or university.”
Certainly, whether newspapers, television, or magazines, editing based on a certain policy is inevitable.
Where to stop is a matter of the journalist’s or editor’s conscience.
You don’t need any license or qualification to become a journalist, but you must constantly check your own position and exercise self-restraint, judging by your conscience how to express things and how far you can go.
Kato.
But the people involved in today’s left-wing media don’t seem to have any such conscience.
Suenobu.
There are people on the ground who are doing their best, though.
The public remembers that during Ichiro Furutachi’s era on “Hodo Station,” former bureaucrat Shigeaki Koga held up a placard reading “I am not Abe,” was removed from the program, and claimed there had been “pressure from the administration.”
So in general public opinion, it has become accepted that “there was pressure.”
Media people themselves began to want to portray a stance of “bravely persevering despite pressure.”
However, I personally have never been pressured, and even if a politician or the government said something to me, I would respond directly.
Rather, what worries me now is that television, and the newspapers that stand behind it through capital ties, are leading the direction of public opinion and are thoroughly imbued with a narrow ideology that deems “anything that differs from that opinion to be dangerous.”
That is far more dangerous.
Kato.
Exactly right.
To be continued.