Based on an editor’s interview published in WiLL, this essay explores why controversial reporting remained uncorrected for so long. It examines internal constraints, organizational culture, and the challenges of self-verification within major media institutions.

2015-12-29
Why were such a series of articles allowed to remain published without prompt correction?

The following is from the New Year special issue of the monthly magazine WiLL (820 yen).

A volume that all citizens should read costs only 820 yen.
Nothing could be more welcome.

Editor-in-chief interview

Hiroshi Hasegawa

“What Is the ‘Asahi Cause’?”

A strong sense of crisis regarding Asahi

—I found The Collapse of Asahi Shimbun extremely engaging.
Having long been an employee and until last year working as an outside contributor for AERA, I imagine you must have had a strong sense of crisis about the Asahi.

Hasegawa

Even while working in the AERA editorial department, I was absorbed in the immediate subjects of my reporting and could hardly turn my attention elsewhere.

Still, it always weighed on my mind that various media outlets, including WiLL, had long continued to pursue questions surrounding the Asahi’s comfort women reporting.

Why were such a series of articles allowed to remain published without prompt correction?

Why did the Asahi Shimbun leave them untouched despite repeated criticism?

I had worked at the Asahi for many years, and the people involved in the comfort women reporting were colleagues working in the same building—some whose faces and names I knew.

My desire grew to go directly to each person, ask questions, and uncover the truth.
It reached what might be called a critical state.

First, I considered that AERA should run a special feature thoroughly examining the comfort women reporting, and I submitted proposals at least twice.

Given the level of attention this issue was receiving both domestically and internationally, I thought there was a chance it might be accepted.
But in the end, it was rejected.

In retrospect, perhaps a magazine wholly owned by the company could not take up what the main newspaper itself would not address.

Moreover, since it concerned the very foundation of the Asahi Shimbun, had AERA attempted such a feature, the magazine itself might not have survived.

Eventually, the main paper carried out its own version, but the content was so inadequate that I left my work at AERA and began reporting for this book.

To be continued.