Feeding on Asahi

An unprecedented media scandal still goes on. Asahi Shimbun reported result of verification of independent committee on false stories of recruiting comfort women and wrong decision of abandoning a column article of a journalist critical against Asahi. The committee concluded that correction of comfort women stories was too late and former president was responsible for unpublished column article. Asahi reiterated apologies on its pages on Monday issue. However, right wing people consistently keep on attacking the paper.

The independent committee criticized Asahi’s attitude on comfort woman issue. It repeatedly reported about the “witness” of recruiting comfort women, who revealed he had been involved in women trafficking. Asahi was late in abolishing the stories after it noticed its falseness and rejected apologizing for those reports. The committee determined that it harmed credibility of its readers. Asahi finally apologized in August, but did not apologize.

What made matters worse was abandoning a column article of Akira Ikegami, which required Asahi to apologize about its failure. The committee found that the decision was actually made by then president, Tadakazu Ito. Ito told his impression on the column story as “very severe” and the leader of editing section explained to editors that abandoning the article would be less risky than publishing and it was decision in perspective of management.

It sometimes happens that an article proves to be wrong, because information brought was false. Even how writers are careful on it, this kind of thing may happen. Asahi was simply wrong when it rejected correction and apology. But, abandoning column article is a matter of contradiction. If Asahi published an article which said “Asahi is a liar,” the newspaper becomes to be lying about being liar as long as the article is correct. Running an opinion requiring apology on a newspaper that rejects apology may be recognized as sending mixed message. So, Asahi killed the article trying to keep its relevancy, which resulted in failure.

The right wing people are delighted with weakness of Asahi. Ultra conservative legislator, Tomomi Inada, Chairwoman of Policy Research Council, required Asahi to recover harmed honor of the Japanese nation. “Its influence on world society was not small. I hope Asahi to lead movement to recover Japan’s honor,” told Inada. They are still looking for their survival feeding on Asahi’s apology.