2010-11-7
The other day, on “Niconico,” Mr. Ichiro Ozawa continued answering questions from Ms. Shoko Egawa and others for an hour and a half, but that evening… I watched only NHK and News Station, but the editing on both was exactly the same.
I think there are people other than myself who felt that this editing concealed the television stations’ hostility, or perhaps malice, toward the Internet, which is increasingly encroaching on their territory.
At the same time, the fact that the two stations mentioned above broadcast only exactly the same portions out of the tremendous volume of words—that is, information—spoken over an hour without even an interruption for commercials also proved that they exist within mass-media totalitarianism.
However, a program that questions one individual, or a person at the center of a controversy, continuously for an hour and a half…
Moreover, one that lets that person speak while incorporating numerous questions submitted in real time by viewers, in addition to those from the moderator and the experts present… is inconceivable on television today, and that, too, is an undeniable fact.
For example… in response to the question, “What do you think about the Kan Cabinet’s approval rating falling into the 40-percent range?”… he said, “Something that was over 70 percent just two months ago has fallen by 30 percent. Isn’t there something wrong with public opinion, too?” I think that even the other stations I did not watch did not broadcast this at all.
Even in this week’s issue of Newsweek—that is, even in the United States—the term “mass-media totalitarianism” appears.…
The inevitable destination of pernicious commercialism.
Almost everything on Japanese television began as an imitation of American television…
In the ways commercials are made and the techniques used, too…
I think this probably has not been shaken off even now.
As I have written many times, without imitating what should have been imitated—“the essence of America = what makes America America”—they imitated pernicious commercialism to the utmost…
The result… in Japan’s case, is of course mass-media totalitarianism…
But it has become something even more outrageous than that.
Television, in particular.