What Asahi Shimbun Means by “Adding an Angle” Is Distorting the Facts

2026-09-06
2024-01-23
“Adding an angle”…a phrase meaning to distort the facts and “steer” an article in a direction convenient to their own principles and assertions or to the company’s policy.
February 20, 2022
The following is from a book by Ryusho Kadota, one of today’s most vigorous journalists, published on May 8, 2021, under the title A New Theory of Class Struggle: The Media and SNS Running Out of Control.
Every Japanese citizen who can read print must go to the nearest bookstore and purchase it.
I will make it known to people throughout the world as much as I possibly can.
Emphasis in the text is mine.
Prologue: The Age of “Media Lynching” and Public Shaming
The Purpose of Media Lynching
“Since when did Japan become a country that bullies the elderly?”
“What was wrong with what he said? Wasn’t he saying that women are excellent?”
In February 2021, when the extraordinary “media lynching incident” against Yoshiro Mori occurred, I heard such reactions many times from people who had read the full text of Mr. Mori’s remarks.
“The ‘fact’ of what he actually said does not matter to them.”
“All they care about is publicly hanging him out to dry and inflicting damage on ‘power.’”
That is how I answered every time I was asked.
On February 3, Mr. Mori spoke at great length for approximately 40 minutes at a meeting of the Organizing Committee that had also been opened to the mass media.
The mass media were listening online.
Mr. Mori always speaks at length, but on this day he was even more talkative than usual.
Beginning with an explanation of Japan Sport Olympic Square, where the meeting was being held, he spoke on a wide range of subjects, including the issue of relocating Chichibunomiya Rugby Stadium and the Rugby Association at the time of the Rugby World Cup.
When transcribed, his remarks amounted to approximately 8,400 Japanese characters.
It was an enormous amount, equivalent to 21 pages of 400-character manuscript paper.
About 500 characters of that concerned women, the part taken up by the mass media.
Here, Mr. Mori was saying, in effect, that “women are excellent, so whenever a vacancy occurs, we always choose a woman” as the replacement.
It was a statement praising women’s abilities, or rather, praising the women of the Organizing Committee sitting in front of him.
However, Mr. Mori is known for not stating his conclusion simply.
He digresses and takes various detours, and in the end brings the discussion to the conclusion he had decided upon in advance.
It is the so-called “Mori style of speaking,” which anyone in political reporting knows.
On this day as well, before reaching his conclusion, he went down a “side road,” saying that at the Rugby Association, where he had served as chairman, the female directors had a strong competitive spirit and that meetings “took a long time.”
Anyone accustomed to the Mori style of speaking would simply have laughed and thought, “So he is taking this kind of detour in order to praise the women of the Organizing Committee sitting in front of him.”
However, shortly after 6 p.m. that day, the atmosphere changed when Asahi Shimbun digitally distributed an article.
〈“Meetings with Many Women Take a Long Time,” Says Yoshiro Mori〉
That was the title given to the article by Asahi.
Anyone who had heard Mori’s remarks and who also knew Asahi’s methods must have thought, “Ah, so this is the part they chose to take up.”
Because they would immediately realize, “Asahi intends to turn this into discrimination against women and make an issue out of it.”
When it comes to cutting out remarks and stitching them together, Asahi is a media organization that allows no other to surpass it.
Instead of focusing on the important latter half of that mere 500-character passage, it deliberately focused on the “side road” in the first half.
But any reporter familiar with the “Mori style of speaking” would naturally have written the headline like this.
〈“Women Are Excellent. Therefore, When a Vacancy Occurs, We Choose a Woman,” Says Yoshiro Mori〉
It is the complete opposite.
Of course, at Asahi, that would not provide material for an attack, so it would not constitute an article.
Because an article without an “angle” is not permitted at Asahi.
“Adding an angle” is internal jargon at Asahi.
It is a phrase meaning to distort the facts and “steer” an article in a direction convenient to their own principles and assertions or to the company’s policy.
The phrase became famous in 2014 when, in the report of the third-party committee established within Asahi over the problems concerning its reporting on the comfort women issue, Yukio Okamoto, a foreign-policy commentator and one of the committee members, wrote the following.
〈Including during the hearings of this committee, I heard the expression “adding an angle” from a number of Asahi employees.
“Simply conveying the facts does not constitute reporting; only after giving it a direction as the Asahi Shimbun can a headline be attached.”
I was astonished by the perception that facts alone do not make an article.〉
Not only Mr. Okamoto but ordinary people as well would surely find the idea that 〈facts alone do not make an article〉 nothing short of astonishing.
Put simply, it means changing the facts themselves in accordance with the company’s policy, so naturally it is astonishing.
But that is Asahi Shimbun.
In this case, the objective was to inflict damage on Mr. Mori and the Tokyo Olympics, if possible drive the Olympics to cancellation, cause the Liberal Democratic Party to lose the election, and drag Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga down from power.
All of Asahi’s articles were directed toward “that,” and the facts could therefore be changed whenever convenient.
What was necessary in order to condemn Mori’s remarks as “contempt for women” was how to internationalize the issue.
In short, it was “to have the foreign media take it up.”
By doing so, they could then bring back to Japan the fact that it had become an issue overseas and steer domestic public opinion.
At that time, the most important thing is to bring out “absolute” words or concepts that no one can oppose.
For that purpose, core words are necessary.
The following were the principal keywords used to condemn Mr. Mori and which had a major impact.
Sexist ■ discrimination against women ■ contempt for women
These were the words used in English-language articles disseminated by Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, NHK, and others.
“The head of Japan’s Organizing Committee is a sexist and made an unforgivable statement showing contempt for women.”
That is how foreign media reported on Yoshiro Mori.
But no one who knows Mr. Mori thinks that he is a “sexist” or “a person who despises women.”
It is well known that, both within his family and in the political world, he is a person who respects the power of women.
However, for the Japanese mass media, led by Asahi, the “facts” do not matter.
They then subject the person to a thorough public hanging through media lynching and bury that person through fabricated matters.
Once the person is reported overseas as someone who discriminates against and despises women, all they need to do is obtain comments from influential overseas sponsors and politicians, or from Japanese politicians, business leaders, sponsors, intellectuals, stars, and others.
Once they succeed in attaching the labels “discrimination,” “human rights,” and “contempt,” no one can oppose them any longer.
Because if anyone opposes them, that person will then become the next target.
And thus, involving ordinary people as well, an abnormal “collective lynching” is completed.
In this way, 83-year-old Mr. Mori, who had been fighting cancer and persevering while undergoing dialysis three times a week, was forced to resign.
By deliberately emphasizing the difference of “sex” between men and women, they placed women in the position of the weak, then branded one person a discriminator as someone who “despised” them and buried him.
Such methods employed by the Japanese mass media are despicable in every sense.
There was no verification of facts, no courtesy, no mercy, no restraint, nothing at all.
I felt profound disappointment not only toward the mass media, but toward Japan itself.
People who expose to the world what they have convinced themselves is “Japan’s shame,” degrading and insulting their own country.
As for those who were manipulated by the manufactured “new class struggle” and joined the collective lynching through SNS, I have no words for them.
To be continued.