Written on May 3, 2019, this essay criticizes NHK’s reporting style in matters such as the Fukushima Daiichi accident, arguing that it presents facts already widely known as if NHK itself had revealed them for the first time.
Referring also to the Maekawa documents, Watch 9, and Arima’s reporting, it sharply points to the ideological tendencies governing NHK’s news division and the problems in its journalistic culture.

2019-05-03
What kind of ideology is held by the people who dominate NHK’s news division, of exactly the same type as when it declared that the materials brought in by Maekawa had been discovered for the first time as the result of NHK’s thorough internal investigation.

This is a chapter I published on 2018/2/28 under the title, “NHK turns everything into something as though ‘we were the first to reveal it’ (laugh).”
Having reread this chapter, I became convinced that Arima of Watch 9, when Asahi’s Moritomo affair ended in failure and it then brought out the Kake matter and turned it into an uproar, sided with Asahi… and that his statement that the materials brought in by Maekawa had been discovered for the first time as the result of NHK’s thorough internal investigation proves exactly what kind of ideology is held by the people who dominate NHK’s news division.
The following continues from the previous chapter.

Maki.
NHK takes issue with the fact that water injection from outside by fire engines had a bypass on the way to the reactor and was not sufficiently reaching it, and prides itself on saying, “It was the reporting team that first showed that possibility to society” (p. 173).

Narabayashi.
NHK turns everything into something as though “we were the first to reveal it” (laugh).
But in fact, this was already recognized among many staff members and experts from the time of the accident.
It is clearly stated even in the materials distributed to the media by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency at the time.

Maki.
It only writes a few lines saying, “As for the ‘bypass’ in fire-water injection, TEPCO itself, the very party involved in the accident, had recognized it from quite an early stage and had been proceeding with countermeasures for the restart of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant” (pp. 176–177), but at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, which passed the safety screening, countermeasures had already been completed.

Narabayashi.
It also says, “If TEPCO had become aware of the weakness called the ‘bypass’ in water injection, should it not have disclosed this information as early as possible to other electric power operators and nuclear-related parties around the world and shared awareness of the issue?” (p. 177), but TEPCO made it public in June 2013, and TEPCO has made efforts to identify the bypass and communicate it to the world in English translation.
This manuscript will continue.