2010-11-5
I want to ask whether the editorial writers at Asahi and Nikkei who wrote today’s editorials did so after reading Chapter 4, “The Ichiro Ozawa Case,” in Tamaki Mitsui’s aforementioned book… The Public Prosecutors Manipulated by “Power”… a book that every Japanese citizen who can read must read…
If they wrote them after reading it, take responsibility immediately for “Japan’s Lost Twenty Years.”
Remove your titles as commentators.
Now, to return to the subject.
It was in 1994 that, unable to remain silent any longer, I first placed an opinion advertisement in the form of a newspaper insert (please refer to the relevant chapter), and in it I wrote, addressing the mass media, that it was you, too, who created the bubble… and, as it happens, in the chapter entitled “Mass Media Reporters Who Write Articles Without Verifying Their Stories” in Tamaki Mitsui’s book mentioned above, there is an account of the bubbles created by the mass media, as seen by a senior prosecutor.
…Getting the mass media to “stir up a wind” was an exceedingly easy thing for me to do.
If I leaked just a little scoop to Company A, Company B would then scramble to follow it up.
If I gave Company B a scoop, Company C would then jump on board as well.
The beat reporters, who wanted material above all else, would believe everything a prosecutor said.
They would not do any corroborative reporting, and as long as they inserted the excuse (disclaimer) “according to sources,” they would often even write articles that went beyond what the prosecutor had said.
Rather than simply writing what had been leaked to them, they would write beyond what the prosecutor intended.
That was what mass media reporters were like.
Of course, we would not readily leak the core information that would be crucial at trial.
We would release only peripheral details, little by little, to stir up a wind in the mass media.
We would create a bubble.
Members of the public exposed to the reporting would mistakenly believe that what was written in the articles was the truth.
They would mistake the entire bubble for fact.
Public opinion would then change, making it even easier for prosecutors to advance their investigations.
“Secretary-General Ozawa, come out into the open, fair and square!”
Even after his secretaries and others were arrested, such calls continued.
This, too, was thanks to the prosecutors’ tireless efforts to leak information.
If a mass media reporter wrote an article that went against the prosecutors’ intentions, that reporter would be barred from the public prosecutors’ office.
For fear of that, the beat reporters could write only articles that favored the prosecutors.
For prosecutors, no one was easier to use than mass media reporters…