As Japan resumed aid to Africa under Prime Minister Abe, TBS aired unverified footage of a Mozambican farmer opposing Japanese assistance. This text criticizes the media’s lack of scrutiny, NGO involvement, and selective framing that ignored China’s role.

May 1, 2016
For a long time, my nightly routine was to watch NHK’s 9 p.m. news, TV Asahi’s “Hōdō Station” at 10 p.m., and TBS’s “News 23” before going to sleep.
Last year, I was left speechless by the appalling quality of reporting on TBS and TV Asahi.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe began diplomacy that looked over the globe as a whole and started implementing policies befitting a nation that should lead the world alongside the United States.
As readers already know, China had been openly pursuing aid to Africa solely for its own interests, and part of the enormous 30 trillion yen in ODA provided to China by Japan—something the Asahi Shimbun had long pressed Japan to do—must have flowed into China’s aid to Africa.
The moment Prime Minister Abe began resuming Japan’s assistance to Africa, TBS aired footage of a farmer in Mozambique claiming that Japanese aid would result in his land being taken away, that he did not want Japanese aid, and that he opposed it.
They also broadcast statements by several locals—clearly unverified—claiming that black water was coming out, as if depicting the reality of Chinese aid, all in collaboration with the NGO that had brought the individual to Japan.
I was not only stunned, wondering whether TBS had lost its senses, but I have continued to criticize this unforgivable conduct, as already noted.
Furthermore, together with “Hōdō Station,” they invited to Japan an elderly Norwegian man unknown to 99.9 percent of people worldwide, had him support Okinawa Governor Onaga, and advocate anti-nuclear views—an episode that truly shocked me and which I have also continued to criticize, as previously stated.
To be continued.