This article exposes Asahi Shimbun’s abnormal media conduct through Masato Hara’s appearance on TV Asahi’s “Hōdō Station” during the Ise-Shima G7 Summit, condemning the network’s manipulation of public opinion, its relentless attacks on Japan and Prime Minister Abe, and its outright denial of the summit’s success as a betrayal of journalistic responsibility.

Since I was unable to watch the Ise-Shima Summit news from the beginning on NHK’s Watch 9, I thought, “Well, on a day like today, surely they will not make any strange broadcasts and will simply report on the summit,” and so I switched the channel to TV Asahi’s Hōdō Station. What I felt was not merely astonishment but the realization that Asahi Shimbun is no longer anything but abnormal. I was so struck by this that I even felt regret over the long years in which I had subscribed to and read such a newspaper without suspicion. Astonishingly, Asahi Shimbun has absolutely no awareness that it was they themselves who created Japan’s so-called lost twenty years. On the contrary, they even claimed that Japan’s prolonged deflation was inevitable and that advanced nations would follow the same path from now on—nothing could be more absurd. The man who was speaking was someone I had occasionally seen in the pages of the paper, a man called Masato Hara. Those who watched the program and who had already understood the true nature of Asahi Shimbun since last August must have felt not merely astonishment but anger. It must have been a truly deep and intense anger. In any case, they continued to attack Prime Minister Abe with childish malice of a level that could only be described as that of a kindergarten child. One cannot help but ask: is this really a Japanese newspaper company? Japan was hosting the G7 as chair country in Ise-Shima. Yet instead of wishing for its success, they were completely denying it. I felt that Asahi Shimbun had become nothing more than a gang of hoodlums. A man like Masato Hara may be strutting about arrogantly in a very narrow world, but all sensible Japanese citizens must surely have been utterly appalled. One does not often encounter a television program as bizarre as this. They were exploiting their own network of reporters to manipulate viewers into believing that their own voices represented the voice of the world. They even put on screen foreign journalists—those of the same kind as that German reporter—journalists from Germany and the United Kingdom who are not merely free readers of Asahi Shimbun but sympathizers as well. I was also astonished by the arrogance in Masato Hara’s manner. Without any sense of shame at being a member of a newspaper company like Asahi, and without awareness of the tremendous damage it has inflicted upon Japan and the Japanese people, he was still energetically engaged in disparaging Japan and its Prime Minister. When his talk finally ended, a woman with the appearance of someone suffering from Basedow’s disease—her gaze itself abnormal, in other words, the unmistakable appearance of a hopelessly devoted believer of the Asahi religion—began speaking about “Asahi’s Okinawa.” I could no longer continue watching such a strange program any further. It was, of course, the limit of my patience, so I changed the channel, and a comedian appeared on the screen.