This article exposes how Japanese media outlets repeatedly undermined major manufacturers such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Toyota with unfounded pessimism, refusing correction even after facts proved otherwise.

2017-05-07
What follows is a continuation of the previous section.
The following is taken from a discussion titled “Placing Hope for Media Reform in the Younger Generation.”
Mabuchi said that in reality the media does the exact opposite, producing reports that instead hold the country back.
He stated that they write and say things such as, “Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is burdened by that issue and has a bleak future.”
Takayama responded that this was simply unbelievable.
He said that the moment when he felt this most strongly was when the sudden acceleration incidents involving Toyota’s Lexus vehicles became a major uproar.
Ray LaHood, then the United States Secretary of Transportation, said, “Do not drive Toyotas.”
It was an outrageous remark, but what mattered was the reaction of the Asahi Shimbun.
At that time, the editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun was Yoichi Funabashi, and he wrote that “in the United States, Toyota has now become synonymous with defective products.”
The short evening front-page column titled “Soryushi,” which normally runs four or five lines, instead stretched to fourteen lines, declaring things such as, “I bought a Toyota car and suffered a huge loss,” and “What are they going to do about this?”
The column “Tensei Jingo” likewise repeated accusations of defective Toyota vehicles.
However, no matter how thoroughly the United States investigated, no defect was found in the Lexus.
Because that result was inconvenient, LaHood took the matter to NASA and tried by any means to uncover a defect.
Even then, it was confirmed that there was absolutely no defect.
When the facts became clear, LaHood said that he had recommended Toyota vehicles as safe to his daughter and that she had actually purchased one, effectively offering an apology and a gesture of reflection.
And yet, despite having written so extensively to disparage Toyota from the editor-in-chief downward, the Asahi Shimbun issued neither an apology nor a correction.
They rode on the coattails of the United States to denounce Japanese products, and when it became clear they were wrong, they simply pretended nothing had happened.
When I read the Asahi Shimbun, I find this incomprehensible as a fellow newspaper journalist.
I cannot believe that something like this can be called a newspaper, and it is time that the people at Asahi engaged in serious self-reflection.
Figures such as Hiroshi Hasegawa and Kiyoshi Nagae have begun to say sensible things,
but one cannot help wanting to say, “Do not wait until you leave Asahi to say it—reform it while you are still inside.”
Still, it is not an entirely negative trend.