April 15, 2021

Japan’s sole public broadcaster NHK has come under fire on social media for muting the popular outcry opposing the holding of the Summer Games from its online streaming of the Tokyo Olympic torch relay.

NHK on its website streams daily a live video of the torch relay. The act in question was confirmed in the live streaming of the torch relay in Nagano on April 1. Shortly after an outcry against the opening of the Olympic Games this summer was voiced, the sound of the video was interrupted for 30 seconds.

Regarding this issue, Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo on Twitter criticized NHK’s act as being unacceptable and wrote that NHK appears to want to turn Japan into a nation like Stalin’s Soviet Union where public debate was suppressed.

It is hardly surprising that NHK did this to please the Suga government which is intent to hold the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics Games.

NHK in the FY2021 basic plan for domestic broadcast declared that it will give broad coverage to efforts made by the government and the organizers to hold the Summer Games even under the pandemic situation. Furthermore, the broadcaster in its latest opinion survey worded questions to mislead respondents to agree to hold the Summer Games.

The role of NHK as public media should be to report on different opinions about the holding of the Games amid the COVID-19 crisis.