Originally published on July 8, 2019.
Using an article about Ochiai Keiko as its subject, this essay sharply criticizes The Asahi Shimbun for prioritizing the preservation of a fabricated image over factual verification, and for continuing to publish what it knows to be false.
Through the issues of discrimination against children born out of wedlock and the story of private school enrollment, it exposes the newspaper’s degeneration as a media institution and its contempt for facts.

2019-07-08
Then let the lie remain.
It is the same as Chinese reporting.
The facts do not matter.
That is the kind of newspaper The Asahi Shimbun is.

The following continues from the previous chapter.
Protect the Fiction Called Ochiai Keiko.
She develops the story by saying that this led her to attend a private school, but private schools are precisely the ones most particular about such family backgrounds.
At prestigious private schools, one often heard of cases where the legitimate wife’s child and the mistress’s child of some man were in the same grade.
One often heard stories such as, “The mistress’s child was the more capable one.”
I think that if the reporter had found and corrected this major lie, Ochiai Keiko’s story would instantly have become dull.
She suffered as a child kept in the shadows.
That whole premise would be blown away.
Come to think of it, in her recent activities she was making noise about “not discriminating against children born out of wedlock as opposed to legitimate children.”
And then the foolish Supreme Court handed down a mad ruling saying that such discrimination must not be allowed.
If it became “a mother who deliberately chose private school even though she could have put her child into public school,” then the carefully created fiction called Ochiai Keiko would collapse.
Then let the lie remain.
It is the same as Chinese reporting.
The facts do not matter.
That is the kind of newspaper The Asahi Shimbun is.
(February 2017 issue.)