Published on January 27, 2020. This article examines the deterioration of the Asahi Shimbun’s reporting in the Reiwa era, using its coverage of the U.S. killing of Commander Soleimani as an example. It criticizes the newspaper’s lack of consistency, noting that one Asahi article described the action as retaliation for the killing of an American citizen, while another asserted that it was an election-driven maneuver.

January 27, 2020
What had once existed has now collapsed into disarray, exposing incoherent page composition and unbelievable major false reports.
The following is the continuation of the previous chapter.
A Lack of Consistency
What has happened to the Asahi Shimbun in the new Reiwa era?
The main purpose of this article is to point out, through concrete examples, the characteristics of the Asahi Shimbun from around the beginning of Reiwa on May 1, 2019, up to the present.
What stands out in the Asahi Shimbun’s recent tendencies is the extreme deterioration of its pages.
For many years, although the Asahi had many biases and misperceptions, it still maintained a certain level of quality as a newspaper belonging to the mass media.
What had once existed has now collapsed into disarray, exposing incoherent page composition and unbelievable major false reports.
Let us first take, as an example, its very recent reporting on the confrontation between the United States and Iran.
At the beginning of January 2020, the U.S. military killed Commander Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ external special operations division.
The direct reason the Trump administration made the decision to carry out that attack was that the special operations unit led by that commander had long been involved in attacks on U.S. military personnel and American-related facilities in the Middle East, causing numerous casualties.
In addition, at the end of the previous year, an armed organization under the control of that unit attacked a U.S. military facility inside Iraq and killed one American military contractor.
For the Trump administration, the boundary line, or “red line,” for taking military action was the taking of the life of an American citizen.
That the killing of Commander Soleimani was also due to the killing of that American citizen had been reported objectively in an article from Washington in the morning edition of the Asahi Shimbun on January 5.
“A senior State Department official also stated that it was ‘a measure to save the lives of hundreds of American citizens,’ emphasizing that the killing was not a declaration of war against Iran. Behind the Trump administration’s adoption of such a stance lies the fact that many American citizens oppose war, and that Trump himself does not want one. In the United States, war-weariness remains deeply rooted because of the quagmire of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and Trump, since the previous presidential election, had made the return of U.S. troops a campaign promise, saying, ‘It is time to end these ridiculous endless wars.’”
“With the November presidential election, in which he seeks reelection, approaching, that stance toward ending wars has grown stronger. However, when an American citizen was killed in a rocket attack inside Iraq on December 27 of last year, the Trump administration reversed its response and began air strikes.”
To summarize the above, the interpretation becomes this: “President Trump originally did not want military intervention in Iraq, Iran, and the like, also taking into account its impact on the presidential election, but this time he had no choice but to strike back in response to the killing of an American citizen by the Iranian side.”
However, in other articles, the Asahi Shimbun repeatedly conveyed an entirely different interpretation.
A typical example was the description in the column “Soryushi” in the evening edition of January 4.
“Again, power creates an overseas crisis before an election and diverts the public’s eyes from suspicions. It is a common tactic, not limited to Trump.”
This is an assertion that “President Trump attacked Iraq for his reelection,” or that “it was to divert the public’s eyes from the impeachment uproar.”
If it were for his reelection, then it would have to be premised on the idea that an attack on Iran would gain the support of many American citizens.
However, the aforementioned article from America by the Asahi itself explains in detail that President Trump himself did not want an attack.
One article in the same Asahi Shimbun writes that this attack on Iraq was “for the election,” while another article writes to the effect that it was “not for the election.”
This can be called a lack of consistency, or, in other words, incoherence.
This article continues.