Originally published on July 21, 2019.
This essay introduces Masayuki Takayama’s column in Shukan Shincho, contrasting the Sankei Shimbun’s scoop on the arrest of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries bombing suspect with the Asahi Shimbun’s erroneous report on the Hansen’s disease family lawsuit and Tokyo Shimbun reporter Isoko Mochizuki’s questioning over the Kake Gakuen issue.
It argues that a genuine scoop is born from accumulated reporting, and that journalism driven by political intent or self-promotion is not journalism at all.

2019-07-21
That would be far better than harassing the Chief Cabinet Secretary.
Though, if there is another aim, as with the Hansen’s disease misinformation, such as self-promotion, then perhaps proper reporting has nothing to do with it.
The following is from Shukan Shincho, released yesterday.
In this week’s issue as well, Masayuki Takayama proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
We do not report.
Even when one says “scoop,” there are scoops of every level, from the finest to the worst.
They received the top-secret Yoshida testimony from an anti-nuclear activist.
If they had published the testimony as it was, it would still have been a scoop.
But if, in line with the intention of the man who gave it to them, they fabricated the lie that “all TEPCO employees fled,” then it can no longer be called a scoop.
They wrote “KY” on coral in Okinawa.
To that photograph, reporter Furuhata Kenichi added the praise, “It will become a monument to the Japanese people.
The spiritual poverty, the desolate heart, that feels no shame in instantly damaging something that has grown over centuries……”
Even so, that cannot be called a scoop either.
A scoop is not something created by kneading together such petty tricks.
For example, there was the Sankei Shimbun’s scoop, “Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Bomber Arrested This Morning.”
Since the 1970s, there had been Chinese organizations in Japan whispering anti-Japanese messages.
They said that Imperial Japan invaded China and killed tens of thousands, and that it exploited, violated, and tormented the peoples of Asia.
Several black-helmeted youths who were incited formed the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front “Wolf.”
At first, they aimed to bomb and kill Emperor Showa, but as expected, Japanese people could not do that.
They gave up and bombed Mitsubishi, having been told that it had “devoured Asia.”
If one searches, many photographs can be seen, including that of an office lady who died after having one leg blown off.
The reporters who stepped onto the raw scene were choked with anger toward the criminals.
In Atsushi Fukui’s Wolf, Scorpion, and Fangs of the Earth, published by Bungeishunju, the obsessive actions of the reporting team that began that day are recorded.
Fukui was then the Sankei’s Metropolitan Police Department cap.
One reporter stayed in the cheap lodging district of Sanya.
It was in order to obtain the bomb-making manual Hara Hara Tokei.
Another reporter stuck close to the identification section of the Metropolitan Police Department.
They also made night visits to detectives’ homes.
They did not go merely to listen obediently, but to confront them with the pieces of information they had gathered.
Through the accumulation of such reporting, the true identity of “Wolf” gradually came into view.
The question was when the Metropolitan Police Department would move.
Having grasped that feeling, Fukui finally went to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Tsuchida Kuniyasu to make the final confirmation.
If an investigation were obstructed for the sake of a scoop, it would be pointless.
The next day, the other newspapers were helpless before the Sankei’s scoop.
Some companies blustered, “Once they arrest him, the Metropolitan Police Department will immediately announce it, and it will appear in the evening editions of all the papers.
What meaning is there in beating others by half a day?”
But in that evening edition, the Sankei published a photograph of the moment the principal offender, Daidoji Masashi, was arrested.
All the other companies fell silent.
Then what meaning, exactly, did the Asahi’s scoop, “Hansen’s Disease Family Lawsuit: Government to Appeal” on July 9, have?
The families, too, wept under prejudice just as the patients did.
They lost jobs and were bullied.
Therefore, the demand that the state pay compensation is quite strained.
Even after the Kumamoto District Court recognized compensation, there were voices asking whether it was acceptable to leave unchanged the tendency and indoctrination that “the state is always the enemy of the people.”
However, the Prime Minister said, “I will think about it seriously.”
There were still three days until the deadline for appeal.
At that stage, was there any need to decide that “Abe will appeal” and that “he is a cold-blooded man”?
Abe himself said, on the very day the Asahi’s scoop appeared, that “we will not appeal.”
The scoop had been misinformation from the beginning.
It was premature, and on top of that, misinformation.
The political department chief, a certain Kurihara, made the excuse in the next day’s paper that he had written with conviction after “reporting to an executive who knew the Prime Minister’s intention.”
But the Sankei made its final confirmation with the commissioner.
Why did Kurihara not press Abe himself?
With this, one can see nothing but malice: another aim, for example, to make it the opening chapter of a plan to attack “cold-hearted LDP” for the House of Councillors election.
Tokyo Shimbun’s Isoko Mochizuki also has a problem with her reporting.
Based on the Asahi’s report that “the approval of Kake Gakuen was the Prime Minister’s intention,” she made a name for herself by questioning Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga for as long as forty minutes.
She says, “If I do not ask persistently, they will lie.”
However, if she had reported, she would have known that the Kake Gakuen story began with the Asahi’s guesswork.
Only the Asahi possesses that document.
Moreover, the crucial parts were blacked out and blurred in the paper.
If Isoko claims to pursue the truth, she should report on the Asahi.
It would also be fine for her to pester them by saying, “Show me that document.”
That would be far better than harassing the Chief Cabinet Secretary.
Though, if there is another aim, as with the Hansen’s disease misinformation, such as self-promotion, then perhaps proper reporting has nothing to do with it.