Why did internal verification and debate fail to emerge over historical reporting? This essay examines how the presence of star reporters and the moral “cause” of criticizing the former military created an atmosphere that suppressed questioning within a major newspaper organization.

2015-12-29
Within the Asahi Shimbun there existed an atmosphere in which it was difficult to raise doubts against the “cause” of criticizing the former military.

The following continues from the previous chapter.

For example, Professor Tsutomu Nishioka of Tokyo Christian University had been criticizing the comfort women issue since the 1990s.

Were there no voices within the company saying, “We should verify this” or “We should respond to criticism”?

Hasegawa

There were not.
Of course, there may have been employees who thought something was wrong, but even after extensive interviews, I heard no accounts suggesting that such voices were strongly raised within the company.

I believe there were two reasons why discussion could not take place.

One was the notion that “criticism merely seeks to find fault with Asahi. Asahi’s articles are factual.”

The other was the belief that although there might be minor doubts, the overall thrust was correct.

Since it was true that the former military had committed wrongdoing, minor inaccuracies did not matter.

Thus, within the Asahi Shimbun there existed a climate in which raising doubts against the “cause” of criticizing the former military was difficult.

The pride of being a “representative newspaper.”

For instance, regarding the “Nanjing Massacre” and the “hundred-man killing contest,” Katsuichi Honda, former Asahi reporter and author of Travels in China, responded to criticism by saying without hesitation, “I merely wrote what I heard from Chinese people.”

Yet any journalist should naturally verify what they hear before deciding whether to publish it.

Hasegawa

That is absolutely correct.

…Didn’t superiors or colleagues point out that something was wrong?

Hasegawa

That is a very perceptive question.

Of course, someone may have raised criticism or doubts, but I believe there were two background factors that prevented them from surfacing within the company.

First, Katsuichi Honda, a reporter in the social affairs department, was not only well known within the company but also a famous star journalist in society.

There was an atmosphere in which it was difficult to question the reporting of such a flagship reporter.

Doing so required considerable resolve and would inevitably result in being treated as a “troublemaker.”

Second, because what he wrote was criticism of the former military, there may have been a sense that “even if not entirely accurate, it may not be far off,” or “given that it was the former military, something like that probably happened.”

Those two factors likely combined.