Written on June 27, 2019.
This essay sharply criticizes the mass media for pretending to speak on behalf of the people while in fact treating them as blank slates, as a foolish mass into which emotions and ideas can simply be poured.
By exposing the essential nature of a media that praised the Japanese military during the war and then abruptly turned into an agitator for humanitarianism and pacifism after defeat, it argues that the media’s posture of pandering is in fact the reverse side of its contempt for the nation.

2019-06-27
Such things fill the history of the mass media… it is a history of nonsense born of contempt for the nation, and if such a media history has been inscribed, it can only be called the self-contempt of media people themselves.

The posture of the mass media is itself the reverse side of a way of thinking that despises the nation.　
A person like me, from quite an early age, formed the habit of trying to feel with my own skin and think with my own head, because what is written in newspapers and spoken on television is either lies or truth, or else a mixture of lies and truth.
But regrettably, many Japanese not only resign themselves to the idea that the mass media is their only source of information, they also rely on it as the sole standard of value by which they themselves are disciplined.　
The people take it that the mass media thinks on their behalf and expresses things on their behalf.　
But, speaking more precisely, it is not that the people believe they themselves possess some kind of thought and that the mass media merely speaks for it.
Rather, they are more or less empty, and are waiting for the mass media to pour emotions, ideas, and theories into that vessel of emptiness.　
This is plainly the 모습 of a foolish mass.
And when I point out that the people’s way of responding to the mass media is the behavior of a foolish mass, intellectuals, including media people, even say that my observation is contempt for the people, elitism, and even fascism.　
This is completely the reverse.
If I truly regarded the people as a wholly foolish mass, then to point out to the foolish mass that it is a foolish mass would itself be a folly greater than theirs.
In my goodness, I trust the people, and I continue to point out that their behavior is that of a foolish mass because I expect that one day they may cast off that posture.　
Indeed, I expect that of myself as well.
In other words, by directing at myself the self-doubt that I too may be one of the foolish mass, I expect that I may perhaps be able to break free from the herd of fools.　
By contrast, it is the mass media, which speaks in the name of public opinion, that regards the people as a foolish mass.
It believes that the people’s minds are in a tabula rasa state, a “blank sheet,” and that on that blank sheet the mass media can print whatever words it pleases.
The media’s posture of pandering to the people is precisely the reverse side of its contempt for the people.　
This should become clear at once, not even by tracing recent concrete developments, but simply by looking more broadly at the historical transitions of the mass media.　
For example, a newspaper that, in the age of war, praised Japanese soldiers who slaughtered Chinese people and wrote articles applauding a “magnificent hundred-man killing contest,” turned one hundred and eighty degrees immediately after defeat and transformed itself into an agitator for humanitarianism and pacifism.
That is the kind of thing with which the history of the mass media is filled.　
Even if one says that ideological change is the way of history, unless the meaning of that change is made clear, it cannot even be called thought.
It is a history of nonsense born of contempt for the nation, and if such a media history has been inscribed, it can only be called the self-contempt of media people themselves.
To be continued.