By watching NHK followed by TV Asahi, this essay exposes deliberate editorial omission. It argues that excluding decisive parliamentary statements constitutes biased broadcasting and raises the question of broadcast law enforcement.

February 15, 2016

After watching NHK’s Watch 9, I switched the channel to TV Asahi’s Hōdō Station.
Earlier on NHK, one of the news items had shown a truly ridiculous line of questioning by a female Democratic Party lawmaker toward Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Sanae Takaichi—questions about the Broadcast Act and freedom of expression.

In the Budget Committee, Prime Minister Abe responded that asking quiz-like questions of that nature was itself a waste of time.
TV Asahi did include that portion, at least.

However, I deliberately continued watching without changing the channel in order to confirm my belief that TV Asahi would never broadcast the segment that NHK had aired—and my prediction proved correct.

During the Democratic Party administration, a vice minister had stated far more explicitly and aggressively than any LDP response that the Broadcast Act does indeed apply, and that biased reporting is not permissible.
Minister Takaichi read aloud that past Democratic Party vice minister’s Diet statement.
TV Asahi did not broadcast that portion at all.

Instead, those brought on screen were Nakajima, Kimura, and other individuals I have mentioned several times—young, inexperienced figures who merely delivered commentary aligned with the intentions of the Asahi Shimbun group.

At that point, I became convinced that this program, and this television network, should be suspended under the Broadcast Act.

Anyone who, like myself, watched this program consecutively after NHK must surely share this view.

This program is truly appalling—far too appalling.
Merely siding with a party like the Democratic Party is itself sufficient grounds, without exaggeration, for broadcast suspension.

At a time when the world is in such a grave state, this is a party whose members gathered en masse to hold press conferences demanding the summoning of former Minister Amari—claiming to have obtained recordings because an accuser brought a recording device into a meeting with a secretary at Amari’s office.

That such a despicable group exists in Japan—targeting Mr. Amari, a truly admirable politician who overcame cancer and successfully concluded the extremely difficult TPP negotiations—is astonishing.

Because of such people, we were forced to pay 30 trillion yen in blood tax to China, created the long-term deflation that the entire world now despises, suffered massive losses of 1,400 trillion yen up and down, and produced the present reality in which one out of every six children grows up in a household earning less than 1.8 million yen per year.

There can be no more foolish story than this.