Japan Press Weekly

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2008 April 2 - 8 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Government requests NHK international broadcaster to pay attention to abduction issue

NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster announced on April 1 that it has accepted a request by Internal Affairs Minister Masuda Hiroya to pay attention to the issue of the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea in its international shortwave radio broadcasts.

An NHK official said that the acceptance of the government request will not affect the broadcaster’s “basic policy of editing international programs independently as a media organization.”

In a published statement on the same day, the Japan Federation of Commercial Broadcast Workers' Unions (Minpo-roren) called on the government to retract its request to the NHK.

It criticized the government’s action as “political interference and a violation of the Broadcast Law that ensures the freedom of editing programs.”

The statement warned that if NHK programs are recognized as “tools of propaganda” by other countries, it will lose international trust, which could lead to undermine the international credibility of all Japanese news agencies.
- Akahata, April 2, 2008