Published on October 17, 2019.
This article introduces an essay by Kadota Ryusho published in the Sankei Shimbun and examines the difference between the Asahi Shimbun and the Yomiuri Shimbun in their reporting on the acquittal of three former TEPCO executives, focusing on the long-term earthquake assessment, tsunami estimates, and the problem of newspapers guiding readers toward a predetermined conclusion.

October 17, 2019.
The following is from an essay by the writer and journalist Kadota Ryusho, published in yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun under the title “The Difference Between Adults and Children Became Visible.”
The following is from an essay by the writer and journalist Kadota Ryusho, published in yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun under the title “The Difference Between Adults and Children Became Visible.”
Why do newspapers not write the truth?
The number of people who hold such a simple question has increased.
In fact, it had been that way for a long time, but now, in the age of individual information transmission through SNS, the customs of the newspaper world have become visible.
What is the custom at which some newspapers excel?
They do not touch upon important facts, and write only the information that will lead readers to the conclusion that accords with their own claims.
That typical method was also seen in the reporting on the acquittal of three former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company.
Can individuals be held criminally responsible for an accident caused by an unprecedented natural disaster?
Public interest was great.
The prosecutors decided not to indict the three men, but they were forcibly indicted by a resolution of the Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution.
The accusation was that although they could have predicted a major tsunami, the three failed to take countermeasures and violated their duty to avoid the result.
But was that really the case?
There are two points.
One is the claim that “countermeasures should have been taken” based on the long-term assessment issued in July 2002 by the Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion, which stated that “there is a possibility that a magnitude 8-class earthquake may occur anywhere along the trench from off Sanriku to off Boso.”
The other is the claim that TEPCO knew, from calculations made in 2008, that a tsunami as high as 15.7 meters could strike the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
The Asahi has consistently claimed that TEPCO executives “received a report of a 15.7-meter tsunami prediction based on the long-term assessment, but instructed that countermeasures be postponed.”
But the facts are different.
The long-term assessment by the Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion stated, regarding future earthquakes off Fukushima Prefecture, that the “interval between occurrences is 400 years or more” and that the probability “within the next 30 years is approximately 7 percent or less.”
It was not something that urged TEPCO to take countermeasures.
Furthermore, the Central Disaster Management Council, headed by the prime minister, did not adopt this vague long-term assessment by the Headquarters.
Instead, it evaluated the deterministic theory of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers’ Tsunami Evaluation Subcommittee, issued five months earlier, which had designated eight wave sources around Japan that could generate tsunamis, and decided to “exclude” the area off Fukushima, where there was no wave source, from the subjects to be examined for tsunami countermeasures.
Moreover, the 15.7-meter calculation, in reality, was nothing more than a “fictional” calculation made by Masao Yoshida, later the superintendent of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
In order to ask the Japan Society of Civil Engineers to redefine the wave source, he calculated the wave source that had caused the Meiji Sanriku Tsunami of 1896 “as if it were located right in front of Fukushima.”
The Asahi guided its readers without touching upon these facts.
On the other hand, the Yomiuri explained the validity of the judgment by writing, “The judgment presented the view that if one were to require measures to be taken by considering every possibility regarding natural phenomena, it would amount to imposing the impossible. It is understandable that the nuclear safety measures of the time were not required to reach ‘zero risk.’”
Even among newspapers, a difference like that between “adults” and “children” has emerged in their contents.