A critical essay exposing how newspapers misuse their public role to spread false narratives and manufacture political turmoil. Centered on a Masayuki Takayama–Noriyuki Yamaguchi dialogue in WiLL, it dissects numerical manipulation and ethical collapse in Asahi Shimbun’s coverage of the Moritomo affair.

In other words, they are using the public instrument of newspapers to spread false reports and turn them into political maneuvering. This is the conduct of gutter newspapers.
2017-05-09
In this month’s issue of the magazine WiLL, a three-column, sixteen-page dialogue feature titled “The Dark Matter at the Core of the Moritomo Issue: Why Did It Stop When Tsujimoto Kiyomi’s Name Appeared,” featuring Masayuki Takayama and Noriyuki Yamaguchi, is essential reading for every Japanese citizen.
It is also essential reading for people around the world who wish to know what truth really is.
It brilliantly demonstrated that Masayuki Takayama is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
At the same time, I am convinced that my own commentaries also helped push Takayama forward.
What follows is a continuation of a section I introduced previously.
Takayama:
The Asahi Shimbun is the same.
Toyonaka City bought land for a park for fourteen billion and several hundred million yen.
Asahi wrote that Kagoike obtained land in the same area at the unjustly low price of one hundred and several tens of millions of yen.
In reality, the park land was discounted by fourteen billion yen and sold for twenty million yen.
They make a fuss about Kagoike’s land being discounted from nine billion and several hundred million yen to one hundred and several tens of millions, but the Toyonaka park was discounted even more.
The school lunch center was also discounted by nine billion yen as waste disposal costs.
If you line up these numbers, there is nothing particularly problematic.
Asahi knew this, yet concealed the discount figures and sided with the Social Democratic Party.
More importantly, why was there garbage in such a place, and why was the land vacant?
If one starts from the history of Itami Airport, everything can be explained, yet despite receiving large monthly allowances for documents, communications, transportation, and lodging, Communist Party and Democratic Party lawmakers did not even attempt to investigate the background.
Even I managed to uncover it.
Yamaguchi:
It is obvious that neither the newspapers nor the opposition parties are trying to pursue the truth.
Takayama:
Asahi Shimbun even brought in a constitutional scholar named Yasuo Hasebe on page two of its April 9 edition and had him argue, “Why isn’t Mrs. Akie being summoned?”, forcing criticism through constitutional theory.
In other words, they are using the public instrument of newspapers to spread false reports and turn them into political maneuvering.
This is the conduct of gutter newspapers.
If left unchecked, newspapers themselves will lose their credibility.
To be continued.