Japan adopted Germany’s feed-in tariff (FIT) renewable energy model, yet Germany significantly revised the system in 2014. Major Japanese media, including NHK, never report this crucial change. This chapter examines the structural bias of Japan’s postwar mass media, their selective reporting, and how anti-government or anti-national narratives overshadow objective information, especially in areas such as energy policy and public broadcasting.

Kawaguchi
But Asahi Shimbun, being a print medium, still requires the effort of reading.
What is even more problematic is NHK.
Because television is a visual medium and information flows merely by watching, it penetrates the public far more deeply than newspapers.
When I was in Germany, I once talked to friends about the NHK Board of Governors.
After Prime Minister Abe took office, members such as Naoki Hyakuta were appointed so that reporting would become somewhat more neutral.
However, for some reason, this story did not make sense to the German listener.
If you think about it, in every country, “state broadcasting” is generally expected to be government-leaning and biased.
In other words, for that German, the idea of “a state broadcaster that reports against the government,” as in Japan, was so far outside the norm that he could not understand what I was talking about.
Even when watching today’s German state broadcasting, although it appears critical or neutral, it still has the national interest and the larger strategic framework in mind.

Takayama
That is the nature of state broadcasting.

Kawaguchi
Japan is the only country that differs.

Takayama
The NHK Board of Governors until recently was nothing but a ceremonial body.
Related to this, when Katsuto Momii became NHK’s president, the backlash against him was enormous.
Whenever the topic of state broadcasting in Japan is discussed, the BBC is always brought up as an example.
NHK insisted from beginning to end that “the BBC criticizes its own government,” thus maintaining the stance that “being anti-Japan is correct journalism.”
They even reported on the fake “emperor trial” staged by the comfort-women activists as if it were proper journalism.
After Kasashintarō retired—and especially after the 1970 security struggle—the major Japanese media entered a period where they were completely out of control.

Kawaguchi
There are many cases in the nuclear-power debate as well where I find myself thinking, “What? That’s strange.”
The “20-year fixed-price full buy-back FIT system” introduced by Germany—Japan copied this model.
But Germany drastically revised this system in 2014.
Yet Japanese media never report this.

Takayama
Out of the abundance of available information, Japanese newspapers and television deliberately select the stories that ought to be discarded.
This is absolutely unacceptable.
Instead of presenting a broader range of information, they choose valueless stories that merely support their own “anti-Japan” agenda.