Published on January 28, 2020. Following the Asahi Shimbun’s major false report on the Hansen’s disease family lawsuit, this article examines another correction in the same paper, in which “efficiency” was misprinted as “public” and “cooperation” as “emphasis.” It criticizes the fact that such elementary errors appeared in print despite the newspaper’s multiple checking process involving reporters, editors, copy editors, and proofreaders, regarding it as a sign of the Asahi Shimbun’s structural deterioration.

January 28, 2020
Even after such a strict process, mistakes occurred in which “efficiency” was misprinted as “public,” and “cooperation” became “emphasis,” and no one on the Asahi Shimbun side noticed until they appeared in the newspaper.
The following is the continuation of the previous chapter.
Deterioration Revealed in Mistakes
Naturally, the Asahi Shimbun carried a correction article on the same front page of its July 10 morning edition under the headline, “We apologize for the erroneous article.”
The correction stated, “It was an error to report that the government had decided on a policy of appealing and fighting the case in the High Court.”
An article supposedly explaining the reporting behind that false report was published on page two.
“The Asahi Shimbun began reporting on how the government would respond, centered on the Political News Department, the Science and Medical News Department, the Social News Department, and the Culture and Lifestyle News Department.” “As a result of interviewing a senior administration official who could know the Prime Minister’s intentions, the Asahi judged that the government’s policy of appealing would not change.”
I was even more astonished by the above explanation.
That is because it stated, almost defiantly, that this major mistake by the Asahi was not simply a misunderstanding or misjudgment by one or two reporters, nor an accidental mistake, but that even after the entire editorial department had conducted collective reporting, it was still fundamentally wrong.
Viewed from the outside, this claim sounds like an admission that this major false report was the mistake of the Asahi Shimbun itself, in other words, the product of the structural and temperamental peculiarities of the Asahi Shimbun.
It is tantamount to admitting that the reporting methods and judgments of the Asahi Shimbun as an entire company were themselves mistaken.
Furthermore, there was another shock on top of that.
It was another correction article printed on page thirty-four of the same July 10 morning edition.
This correction was an apology for mistakes in the wording of two articles that had appeared in the previous day’s July 9 morning edition.
Its content was as follows.
“The phrase ‘the administration is operated properly and publicly’ was an error for ‘the administration is operated properly and efficiently.’” “The phrase ‘closely emphasizing with the international community’ was an error for ‘cooperating with the international community.’”
The above may be called minor mistakes.
Yet they are far too elementary and basic.
Both are mistakes at the level of an elementary school student.
At any newspaper company, whether a news article is short or long, it is written by a reporter and reviewed by a desk editor.
The same article is then further checked by an editor known as a layout editor, who gives it a headline, and the completed article with its headline is then checked further by proofreaders.
No matter how much the Internet and high technology may be introduced, this is surely the foundation of newspaper production.
Even after such a strict process, mistakes occurred in which “efficiency” was misprinted as “public,” and “cooperation” became “emphasis,” and no one on the Asahi Shimbun side noticed until they appeared in the newspaper.
Moreover, such mistakes occurred on the very same day that the front-page lead article ended up as a major false report.
No matter how true it is that human beings make mistakes, I felt, based on my long experience as a newspaper reporter, that this was a phenomenon I could not imagine.
I was stunned, wondering whether the Asahi Shimbun had finally deteriorated to such a level.
This article continues.