While the old media devoted relentless coverage to the Nantan case in Kyoto, reporting on the fatal capsizing accident off Henoko remained strikingly subdued.
Through this Sankei article, this essay examines bereaved families’ direct communication, information flow in the SNS era, the arbitrariness of television coverage, and the deepening distrust of the media.
Why did television, which usually relies on elaborate models and on-site dramatization, fall so quiet over the Henoko accident?
This is an essential critique of the modern media that every Japanese citizen should read.

Old Media Chases “Nantan” More Than “Henoko”.
Why Won’t They Build a Boat Model?
Criticism Has Even Reached the BPO.
Media Watch.
Minagawa Takeshi.
Sankei News.

What follows is an article from a day’s issue that even I, a Sankei Shimbun subscriber, had left unread.
All Japanese citizens must read it.
The emphasis outside the headline is mine.

The case in which an elementary school boy who had gone missing in Nantan City, Kyoto Prefecture, was found dead came to a shocking conclusion with the arrest of his foster father.
Television in particular kept sending helicopters day after day, even on days when there was no movement in the investigation, and endlessly reported on the scene, repeating a considerable amount of coverage that hardly seemed meaningful, such as, “Investigators are walking there.”

Meanwhile, reporting on the fatal capsizing accident off Henoko in Nago City, Okinawa Prefecture, remains subdued as ever, with the exception of Sankei Shimbun.
On the website of the Broadcasting Ethics & Program Improvement Organization, or BPO, one of the opinions frequently submitted by viewers in March was introduced as follows: “Isn’t the number of broadcasts by television stations as a whole on the Henoko accident too small?”
In both cases, young and precious lives were lost, and there can be no difference in the weight of those tragedies.

The bereaved family of the second-year female student at Doshisha International High School who died in the capsizing accident has continued to share information on SNS through note and YouTube.
Not only do they provide detailed records from the day of the accident and matters concerning the school’s response, but they also post photographs of their daughter from early childhood and memories of her, and it is impossible to read without tears.

However, some media outlets deliberately omitted passages touching on the background of the accident, such as the school’s “peace studies” and the family’s regret over having allowed her to board a “protest boat.”
There were also outlets that only belatedly reported the very fact that the family had begun speaking out.
Each company is free to decide what to report, but it is very hard to believe they are responding to the bereaved family’s desire to share the unusual nature of the accident and to prevent it from fading with time.

Some media even seem uncomfortable with the parties directly involved sending information out through SNS on their own.
Does it inconvenience them that politicians and others, too, can communicate directly without passing through their “filter”?

The media are not trusted.
One statement in the family’s posts was especially striking.
Addressing media personnel and others, they appealed as follows.
“There is no problem with using the content of our posts and photographs in news coverage.”
“As for our daughter’s personal information, we would like you to refrain from obtaining it by interviewing other people.”

These are words that those who belong to the media must ponder very carefully.
The media repeatedly conduct intrusive interviews in incidents and accidents and then expand that intrusion to the surrounding people.
One senses in the family a powerful determination to avoid, at all costs, allowing information whose source is unknown to walk on its own as “fact.”
In other words, newspapers and television are hardly trusted at all.

At the same time, one can also sense the family’s complex wish that their feelings be conveyed through the characteristics of the “mass media,” which can report them more broadly.
Or perhaps they assumed from the outset that this would be a case difficult for most media to cover, and therefore decided to leave behind an accurate record.

The writing on note is extremely calm and logical.
Its “facts” are limited to what could be confirmed with the relevant parties, and these are written clearly apart from the family’s own feelings and assertions.
Because emotion is suppressed as much as possible, their bitterness and grief come through all the more strongly.

With the spread of SNS, cases in which the “parties concerned” directly address public opinion will likely continue to increase, but perhaps that is not very interesting for the media.

For example, regarding Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s information dissemination, criticism is conspicuous: “She only communicates through X, and there are too few press conferences and doorstep interviews.”
“She is avoiding media questioning.”

Of course, it is better for the number of prime ministerial press conferences and the like to be greater rather than fewer.
Rather than one-sided communication that naturally tends to favor oneself, truth may sometimes be approached more closely through third-party questions and scrutiny.
However, I do not believe there are all that many media organizations with the ability to draw out more than what the parties themselves have already directly stated, to scrutinize it, and to communicate it accurately.

Rather, now that the gap between “what was actually said” and “what is reported” can be exposed through SNS and video, one even gets the impression that they lament the fact that easy “cropping” and slanted reporting have become more difficult.

An action that also casts a stone into media studies.
The nature of the matter may be different, but some media cannot avoid appearing to use even the trembling voice the bereaved family put out on note in ways convenient to themselves.

Already, even without newspapers or television, the family’s feelings have begun to reach the public, and the facts can also be communicated.
At the same time, by calling for information, they are also trying to shoulder part of the effort to uncover the truth.
The bereaved family is taking the lead in doing what the media ought to be doing.

In the past, the relationship between bereaved families and the media in incidents and accidents has repeatedly been debated, including the harm caused by swarms of reporters, and has even become a theme in university media studies.
This latest action may well be casting a stone into those discussions too.

So what should the media do?
It can only uncover the truth through reporting that the bereaved family themselves cannot do.
Although there are aspects of the cause of the accident itself that must be left to the investigative authorities, there remain many things that have not yet been clarified.

Why did the school continue “peace studies” that involved putting students on protest boats?
Who bears responsibility?
Are there similar cases at other schools?
What kind of organization is the “Heli Base Opposition Council,” which operated the protest boat, and why has it continued behavior that appears to reflect a daily lack of respect for the law?
And why have such activities been allowed to continue?
Aside from the few press conferences that have been held, none of the parties involved has done much direct communication of its own.

This has nothing to do with the ideology of the group that operated the boat.
If the media are only going to fail to convey the voices of those who actively provide information, or intentionally crop them, then there are other things they should be doing.
In the SNS era, the major media should not dismiss personal information dissemination across the board, but rather direct that reporting power toward the information that is not being put out.

In the Nantan case, they used their favorite models.
What victims and bereaved families fear most in incidents and accidents is that the truth will fade away before it is clarified.

That is precisely why it matters when the media value stories such as “○ months since the ○○ accident,” or try to keep public attention on a case through programs on “unsolved incidents.”
There is still much that the media can do.

On television news shows and wide shows, it is common for them to quickly build models recreating the scene immediately after an incident, or to send reporters into the location to make a visual appeal.
This too is a television-style production meant to leave a strong impression on viewers, and it is also something only the media can do.

If things were as they should be, then in the Henoko accident the program anchors should have been climbing aboard a full-scale model boat marked “Heiwamaru” and “Fukutsu,” frowning as they denounced it, saying, “I can’t believe they put more than ten people on such a small boat.”
Nor would it have been strange to see small boats floating in waters near the scene, with young announcers raising their voices and saying, “The shaking is incredible.”
“It’s impossible even to stand.”

To bereaved families sunk in grief, such dramatization might look excessive.
But although television normally does such things as if they were routine, I have little memory of seeing them this time.
Even the methods television has supposedly used to “prevent an accident from fading from memory” have completely retreated into the shadows.

Among the newspapers on the 16th of this month reporting one month since the accident, only Sankei Shimbun carried it as the lead on page one and the lead on the social affairs page, while Mainichi Shimbun ran only a two-column social affairs article.
Television, meanwhile, became excited over the arrest of the foster father in the Nantan City case, built one of its trademark models, and spent nearly the entire day explaining where the case was headed.

“Isn’t there too little reporting on the Henoko accident?”
Opinions like the one introduced at the beginning as having been submitted to the BPO are now pouring across SNS with a force too great to ignore.

Distrust of the media has become even more visible.
Had this been an era without SNS, the truth of the accident might never have been pursued simply because newspapers and television failed to report it, and the voice of the bereaved family might never have reached public opinion to this extent.

Including the very way bereaved families are approached by reporters, I feel there may come a day when this accident is looked back upon as a major crossroads for the old media.