A broadcast by TBS’s “Hiruobi!” deliberately edited footage to create a false impression during the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election coverage. This chapter reveals how television news routinely “manufactures” images to steer public perception, based on insider testimony.

2017-08-01
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Images Can Be “Manufactured”.
Kato.
What can only be described as deliberate is, for example, TBS’s program “Hiruobi!”.
In its July 3 broadcast following the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election, it aired footage claiming that LDP assembly member Shigeo Kawai refused a handshake from Governor Yuriko Koike during her first appearance at the metropolitan government office.
Commentators went on to say things like “He could at least shake hands” and “Just another black-headed rat.”
In reality, however, Mr. Kawai did shake hands with Governor Koike.
He declined a commemorative photo, but he did not refuse the handshake.
Despite this, the program intentionally cut the VTR at the exact moment just before the handshake, when Governor Koike extended her hand, and reported it that way.
This can only be described as deliberate.
After this was pointed out, TBS’s “Hiruobi!” later had an announcer bow and say, “The content was incorrect. What Mr. Kawai declined was not a handshake but a photo. We apologize,” and that was the end of it.
Suenobu.
In short, images can be “manufactured.”
Both TBS and TV Asahi are “manufacturing” images.
When I was younger, I was part of the Asahi group, so I was on the left, and back then I eagerly produced “edgy” footage of the kind criticized in Asahi Shimbun commentary.
Because I myself did those things in the past, I have no intention of claiming that only I am right.
Unless footage was made that way, it would not become a program or news item. That set of values and the “atmosphere on site” existed, and I taught that to junior colleagues as well.
Later, however, I went to university to teach students and conduct research because I felt the need to reexamine my own reporting.
After the Gulf War, during the dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces for PKO missions, we aired only footage of personnel working as carpenters, doctors, and other civilian professions, even though they were in uniform, so that viewers would feel “Is it really appropriate to send the Self-Defense Forces?”.
It created the impression that “there is no need for the Self-Defense Forces to go.”
That was wrong, so now, in lectures and classes, I show the VTRs I once produced and say plainly that they were wrong.
Kato.
So you’re confessing, then (laughs).
Suenobu.
When I do that, people say, “You’re cozying up to the administration again,” but that’s not the case.
The prevailing atmosphere at broadcast stations is that power is evil, the media must oppose power, in other words, they must be anti–LDP.
The role of journalism is to “monitor power,” not to oppose everything indiscriminately.
However, unless a program looks like it is “hitting the strong,” with sharp edges, it cannot get ratings.
To be continued.