Written on June 27, 2019.
This essay criticizes the Japanese mass media for using opinion polls to steer public opinion and then using the results to further intensify its own agitation.
By exposing manipulative wording in questionnaires, the obscurity of sampling methods, and the creation of vague moods through television reporting, it depicts a structure that leaves viewers with nothing but hazy impressions such as “well, this sort of thing” and “it cannot be called good,” and denounces the distortion of opinion-making by the media.

2019-06-27
It seems that the principal role of television is to give an enormous number of viewers a vague, formless mood.
All phenomena are lumped together as “well, this sort of thing,” and all judgments are reduced to “it cannot be called good.”

Next, let me touch on a somewhat more concrete point.
The miserable condition of distorted and debased opinion polls.
What is especially conspicuous is the point that each media outlet makes the fullest possible use of so-called opinion polls as lubricant for keeping large-scale reporting in motion.
Figures such as “85 percent think getting rich without effort is outrageous, 70 percent think the consumption tax is an evil tax…” dance across the pages and float across the screen.
As I have already said, public opinion itself is not always correct.
Not only that, it is a fundamental condition for good democracy to understand that public opinion can be greatly distorted and degraded.
However, without dwelling on that point here, I would like to indicate the trickery and distortion contained within opinion polling itself.
First of all, in many cases, when each company presents its opinion poll, it does not make clear how large the sample size is, or what the basic character of the sample is.
Indeed, it does not even suggest it.
It is not made clear whether they asked fifty people around them, whether they distributed hundreds of thousands of survey forms indiscriminately and tabulated the responses, or whether they used student part-timers to gather opinions by telephone.
At any rate, all survey results become the opinion of “the nation.”
Moreover, this can be said of opinion polling in general, but media artifice is greatly at work in the way the questionnaire itself is worded.
For example, after partially disclosing a document of uncertain authenticity called the Recruit donation list, and reporting scandalously for weeks that the number of people involved amounted to 150 in all, they then ask a question such as, “What do you think of those connected with Recruit, do you think they are suspicious, or do you think they should be overlooked…?”
Naturally, the overwhelming majority answer “suspicious.”
If instead one were to ask, “Do you think it is suspicious, or do you think it is perfectly acceptable, to criticize others by name without any firm evidence…?” then once again, there would likely be many answers saying “suspicious.”
The result of an opinion poll is greatly affected by the context in which the question is posed, and by where the target of the question is directed.
If one were to count up all the trickery the media employs in opinion polling, there would be no end to it.
Since this is something I have heard secondhand, I will not state it as certain, but I have even heard that in opinion polls using student part-timers, there are cases in which the students themselves, sitting in coffee shops, write down the answers in place of the people.
While mixing together techniques large and small, what the media is aiming at is probably the following.
After stirring up public opinion to a certain stage, it announces the results of an opinion poll in order to ratify that effect, and then uses that as a trigger to strengthen the agitation still further.
If one includes the effect of television in this as well, the situation is truly disastrous.
What news casters use in abundance is mood.
It is a method of expressing atmosphere and emotion in completely vague language, yet with words carrying a decisive direction.
For example, there was a time when former Prime Minister Takeshita responded to the media about the Recruit issue with the mood-laden phrase, “Well, this sort of thing, you can’t really say it’s good,” and the media too inserts at the end of its report the comment, “Well, you can’t really say this sort of thing is good, can you.”
In the end, the viewer is left with the impression that “something not good is happening.”
There is hardly any television reporting that clearly makes distinctions among those connected with Recruit, distinguishing those who violated the rules, those who remained within them, and those who were right on the borderline.
It seems that the principal role of television is to give an enormous number of viewers a vague, formless mood.
All phenomena are lumped together as “well, this sort of thing,” and all judgments are reduced to “it cannot be called good.”
To be continued.