An NHK BS news program featured Ron Steslow as someone who had emerged from within the Republican Party to criticize Trump.
Amid suspicions of Chinese Communist Party information operations targeting the United States and Japan, this article discusses doubts about whether NHK has failed to recognize that context and is instead being taken in by information from the Chinese side.
2020-03-03
Whose Information Is NHK Acting On?—Questions About Its Coverage of Ron Steslow and China
Right now, an NHK BS news program is running a peculiar report about a man named Ron Steslow, claiming that someone who criticizes Trump has emerged from within the Republican Party.
The moment I saw this man’s face and expression, I remembered something I have written about many times.
Namely, that there are certain characteristics in the expressions of people under the influence of Chinese or South Korean operations.
First of all, this man is utterly shallow.
Neither his words nor his expressions have any substance.
NHK appeared to be gleefully presenting the narrative that criticism of Trump had emerged from within the American Republican Party.
But what lies behind it?
Who is trying to show such a person to Japanese viewers, and with what intention?
That is what we must consider.
It is clear how much China dislikes the Trump administration.
That is because the Trump administration was the first American administration since the war to seriously confront the Chinese Communist Party’s high-handed conduct.
The story that someone has emerged from within the Republican Party to criticize that same Trump is exceedingly convenient for the Chinese Communist Party.
Is NHK simply broadcasting information convenient for China directly to the Japanese people?
That is how it looks to me.
Does NHK understand nothing at all?
No, it is not that it does not understand.
Could it be receiving information from the Chinese side and eagerly seizing upon it?
In other words, could it be manipulated by Chinese intelligence agencies?
China has not placed so many of its various government agencies around NHK for nothing.
There can probably be little doubt that many of them are intelligence agencies.
What should Japan’s public broadcaster actually be doing?
It should be informing the public about how the Chinese Communist Party conducts information operations around the world.
Even reporting on American domestic politics is not unrelated to China’s intentions.
In particular, the context in which Japan’s public broadcaster presents criticism of the Trump administration is extremely important.
It is not enough simply to report that there are anti-Trump voices even within the Republican Party.
Whose voices are they?
What organizations are they connected to?
What flows of funding and information are involved?
What significance do they have for the Chinese Communist Party?
Unless reporting examines matters that far, it cannot be called international reporting.
Once again, NHK lacks that most important perspective.
Or rather, could it be deliberately excluding that perspective instead of merely lacking it?
The Japanese people must never accept NHK’s international reporting uncritically.
Particularly when it comes to reporting on China, South Korea, the United States, and the Trump administration, we must always question the possibility of information operations behind it.
If NHK, which collects reception fees from the public in the name of public broadcasting, is disseminating information convenient for the Chinese Communist Party, that cannot be dismissed as mere biased reporting.
It is a national issue.
It is an issue concerning Japan’s national security.
The Chinese Communist Party does not attack through military means alone.
It attacks through the economy.
It attacks through diplomacy.
It attacks through education.
And it attacks through the media.
Could NHK have become part of that battlefield?
I have strong suspicions.