Drawing from Masayuki Takayama’s America and China Arrogantly Lie, this essay argues that Japanese television networks bear even greater responsibility than Asahi Shimbun for systematic opinion-shaping, having amplified falsehoods without investigation and entrenched a distorted historical narrative.

The guilt of the television networks is heavier than that of Asahi, but they are foolish and have no awareness of it.
2016-08-27
What follows, continuing from the previous chapter, is also taken from Masayuki Takayama’s book America and China Arrogantly Lie.
From page 238.
All bold emphasis other than the title is mine.
Asahi Shimbun is terrible, but television is even worse.
Why did Asahi decide only now to correct the ruins built up over thirty years by Seiji Yoshida’s falsehoods and the lies of the Yoshida testimony added just last year.
One reason is that the government decided to release the Yoshida testimony, which Asahi thought would never see the light of day.
Once that happened, Asahi’s lie that TEPCO employees fled “like Chinese” would be completely exposed, as President Iryo Motomura admitted at a press conference.
Did they think that confessing would make them innocent.
The psychology of criminals is hard to understand.
The lie of the so-called comfort women also went beyond Korea’s original promise merely to extort money from Japan, leading to the erection of strange statues around the world, attacks on Japanese abroad, and an unexpected turn of events.
Asahi revealed in its September 13 editorial, “We thought now was the right time to come clean.”
Motomura said “I’m sorry,” but there is no way the sins of Asahi—“which demeaned Japan even by twisting facts,” as Kadota Ryusho put it—can be forgiven.
Abandon the editorial policy rooted in the GHQ historical view and sever ties with China and Korea.
If that cannot be done, there is nothing left but to cease publication.
Mainichi and Tokyo, which see themselves as “little Asahis,” are equally guilty.
Tokyo in particular has been run under provincial ownership with the attitude of “just copy Asahi.”
It is time to admit mistakes and return to its hometown of Nagoya.
However, the reason this bizarre self-denigrating historical view has become so entrenched in society is not due solely to Asahi and the little Asahis.
The heaviest guilt lies with the television networks, which call themselves news organizations yet conduct no reporting, do no thinking, and simply ride on Asahi to produce programs.
Both NHK and TBS, while watching Asahi, say, “The Osprey is coming. Make thirty protesters look like ten thousand.”
“Run long segments on anti-nuclear protests” remains the standard even now.
That television cannot function without Asahi was proven by the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
Asahi’s morning edition that day declared a victory for Democrat Kerry.
It predicted a landslide defeat for Bush, but the result was Bush’s reelection.
Morning programs on every TV network fell silent, with no commentator able to explain what had happened.
In general, every network begins its program with commentators reciting Asahi’s company line—“anti-nuclear,” “anti-war,” “China and Korea are good countries,” “the Abe administration is evil”—and then saying, “Five seconds to air.”
That is why, on TBS’s program hosted by Hiroshi Kume, Yuzuki Muroi was made to say, “Even if attacked by Chinese or Koreans, it’s better to keep saying ‘please stop.’”
But Chinese and Koreans will rape regardless of whether Muroi says “please stop.”
In Tongzhou they raped all day long, then cut off breasts, slit bellies, and killed by driving sticks into genitals.
Repeating a history of ethnic elimination, they particularly favor the destruction of sexual organs and wombs.
If Muroi had a child, they would cut off the child’s fingers, thread wire through the nose and tie the child to her, and torture and kill the child before the mother’s eyes.
In the Setagaya family murder of four more than a decade ago, the perpetrator tortured and killed a child held in the mother’s arms.
That is why the perpetrator is said to have been Chinese or Korean.
The futility of continuing to say “please stop” is not discussed on television by Chinese-born commentator Keiko Cho or Korean commentator Kyung-joo Kim.
Because if they spoke the truth about China and Korea, they would no longer be invited on programs.
Thus Kim Kyung-joo, referring to the Sewol ferry whose captain fled, spread Asahi’s lie—“In the Fukushima nuclear accident, ninety percent of municipal tram workers fled”—on TV Asahi’s Asahi Nama to secure her appearance rights.
On the same program, when the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform was discussed, Dave Spector pleased the network by saying, “They probably took money from greasy LDP politicians,” and proclaimed that Honda Katsuichi’s Nanjing Massacre “certainly happened” because “foreigners say so.”
If white missionaries and The New York Times say it happened, then it is true.
Dave also waved George Hicks’s book The Comfort Women on screen regarding the comfort women issue.
Hicks’s source was Seiji Yoshida’s lie, but the argument is that once whites intervene, it becomes truth.
This perfectly overlaps with Asahi’s white GHQ historical view that “the Japanese are at fault.”
Among many foolish commentators, the “blond Asahi Shimbun” who can read the station’s intent is extremely valuable.
“Nothing is better than television for guiding public opinion” is a phrase Wakamiya Yoshibumi and Tetsuya Chikushi exchanged in Asahi’s pages (October 12, 2007) when the first Abe administration was brought down.
Television networks permeate Asahi’s lies through commentators.
That is how Asahi can guide public opinion.
The guilt of the television networks is heavier than Asahi’s, but they are foolish and have no awareness of it.

---