How Asahi Conceals Its Wrongdoings — The Editorial Tricks That Mask Deep-Rooted Malice
This chapter exposes how Asahi Shimbun systematically minimizes its past fabrications and misconduct. From the “poison gas” fabrication by Culture Department Chief Satake—who threatened Sankei Shimbun for pointing out the lie—to evasive corrections that never admitted the core falsehood, Asahi repeatedly buries its wrongdoing. The chapter also lists five major scandals, including plagiarism, handing interview recordings to third parties, accepting funds from Takefuji, and leaking internal NHK materials. The editorial writer, despite the gravity of these scandals, subtly hides their malicious nature.
2016-01-08
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Such rewriting was later proven not to have taken place, yet Asahi Shimbun has still not issued a correction.
Incidentally, the person who turned smoke screens into “poison gas” was Satake, then head of the Culture Department.
When Sankei Shimbun pointed out the lie, he barged into their newsroom and shouted, “How dare you defy Asahi. A newspaper like yours deserves to be crushed.”
He was worse than any back-alley tabloid.
In the end, Satake wrote a correction a few days later, but even then he avoided admitting the core falsehood.
He did not write “It was not poison gas,” but merely said, “The location of the operation was incorrect,” thereby dodging responsibility.
Asahi Shimbun has erased all these major fabrications from its history, and, as noted earlier, begins its list of scandals with the 1989 “coral graffiti incident.”
Even so, it lines up five cases:
“Five years ago, a Hiroshima bureau reporter plagiarized a Chugoku Shimbun article.”
“More recently, there was misconduct in which a reporter handed recorded interviews to a third party.”
“Funding of five million yen from Takefuji to Weekly Asahi.”
“And the leak of internal materials concerning interviews with NHK executives.”
As the editorial writer listed these, he must surely have sighed.
Even so, the writer manages—just like in the coral graffiti scandal—to cleverly conceal how malicious these actions truly were.
This chapter continues.