This chapter exposes Asahi Shimbun’s fabricated claim that NHK executives were pressured by Shoichi Nakagawa and Shinzo Abe regarding a wartime–comfort-women program. The accusations proved entirely false, yet Asahi issued only a vague internal “investigation” while shifting attention to the leak of its reporter’s tapes. Its collaboration with Gendai reflects a rigged, unethical media structure unmatched by any other Japanese newspaper.

2016-01-08

This is the continuation of the previous chapter.
A method reminiscent of Mao Zedong.
As the final scandal, Asahi lists “the internal document leak involving interviews with NHK executives.”
This wording itself represents the peak of Asahi Shimbun’s deceptive techniques.
It began with the January 12, 2005 issue, in which Asahi claimed that Shoichi Nakagawa and Shinzo Abe “summoned” NHK executives the day before the broadcast of a special program on the people’s tribunal concerning wartime comfort women and pressured NHK to change the content.
Later it was revealed that Nakagawa was not even in Japan that day, Abe had summoned no one, and the actual reason for the program’s revision was an internal NHK correction due to its excessive bias.
The article was a fabricated piece with a malicious political agenda.
Cornered, Asahi published the results of an internal investigation in its July 25 edition.
The content claimed that the article was not a fabrication, but the truth could not be fully confirmed — a self-serving excuse.
Small wonder, considering that the “investigation” was conducted by the managing editor and the head of the social affairs department at the time of the article — people who would lose their jobs if fabrication were confirmed.
Yet Asahi’s editorials pretended none of this happened.
Instead, they focused on the fact that a tape recorded by an Asahi reporter during the interviews leaked outside the company and appeared in the August issue of Gendai.
They labeled the leak as the “scandal.”
The author of the Gendai article was Akira Uozumi.
He came from Kyodo News, which is even further left than Asahi, and wrote mainly for Weekly Friday and Gendai, now considered by some the successor to Sekai.
The content of the obtained interview notes — as indicated by the headline “Will Nakagawa and Abe Still Deny It?” — was entirely pro-Asahi.
In bicycle-racing terminology, it was “Gunma–Gunma.”
A blatantly rigged game set up by both sides.
Among all Japanese newspapers, none has committed scandals as malignant as this.
This chapter continues.