Japan Press Weekly

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2011 June 29 - July 5 TOP3 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

TEPCO ads buying media support

Tokyo Electric Power Co. Ltd. (TEPCO) in its business report at its shareholders’ general meeting on June 28 called for the need to thoroughly cut back on investment costs, sell out the assets on hand, and consolidate its business ventures with a view to promptly implement the streamlining of the group. However, the report is silent about a budget category which is virtually outside its cutback efforts. This is its budget for publicity and development, which amounts to more than 20 billion yen a year.

“Our advertising cost in FY 2010 is nearly 11.6 billion yen,” said TEPCO’s new president Nishizawa Toshio at the shareholders’ meeting. TEPCO’s financial statement has no item on advertisement costs. TEPCO ads come under the heading “promotion and development costs.”

According to TEPCO, costs related to promotion and development cover advertisements, management of electricity showrooms in the TEPCO region, and various events and campaigns.

The Tokai Power Plant, which started operation in July 1966 at Tokai Village in Ibaraki Prefecture, is the first commercial nuclear power plant in Japan. It was followed by more commercial nuclear power plants such as Tsuruga Plant Unit 1 (1970) and Mihama Plant Unit 1 (1970) in Fukui. TEPCO in 1971 also launched commercial operation of the No. 1 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant.

30-fold increase in 45 years

TEPCO’s financial statements since FY 1965, a year before commercial utilization of nuclear power began, show that the TEPCO promotion and development outlay was 750 million yen in FY 1965, jumping to 24.3 billion yen in 2009, a 30-fold increase in 45 years.

The rapid increase in expenditure for publicity in the late 1970s, the late 1980s, and the early 2000s is readily apparent.

To contain mounting public criticism

“The TEPCO 50-year history” report points out that the company’s attempt starting in January 1970 to buy land for the construction of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata met with strong opposition.

In September 1974, the nuclear-powered ship Mutsu had a radioactivity leak during an output increase test, which caused the turmoil later. At Three Mile Island in 1979, loss of cooling water from a nuclear reactor, which was the largest scale accident at that time, occurred.

The most serious nuclear accident occurred at the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in 1986 in the then Soviet Union.

“The TEPCO 50-year history” report describes the late 1980s through the 1990s as a period which was marked by some “adverse winds” affecting nuclear power generation. With the growing public distrust of the safety of nuclear power generation and mounting citizens’ opposition movements, the TEPCO publicity costs continued to snowball.

During the 2000s, the attempts to hide nuclear reactor accidents and initiate falsification of data surfaced. In 2004, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant was shut down due to the Niigata-Chuetsu Earthquake.

Industry courting media favor

Not only TEPCO but the power industry on the whole in Japan thought that something had to be done to deal with mass media coverage of nuclear power issues. Suzuki Tatsuru, who served as publicity department director of the Federation of Electric Power Companies (FEPC), which is made up of 10 power companies including those of Tokyo, Kansai, and Chubu, from 1971 through 1982, in his memoir, entitled “New challenge for power industry,” is outspoken about how the industry courted media favor to endorse pro-nuclear power policy planning.

Defining the publicity cost for nuclear power not simply a PR cost but a part of the cost for constructing nuclear power plants, Suzuki made the maximum use of publicity expenditures in the selection of construction sites as well as in influencing public opinion.

On August 6, 1974, marking the 29th anniversary of the atomic bomb dropping on Hiroshima, Asahi Shimbun carried a large ad titled, “What kind of impact does radiation have on the environment?”

Witnessing the reduction of corporate advertisements due to the oil shock, the major daily at that time decided to carry many opinion ads, including those promoting nuclear power generation.

This ad was arranged by Suzuki of FEPC, who recalled, “Since Asahi has many intellectual readers, we mobilized scholars and researchers to create an ad as a PR campaign from an independent source.”

Major papers changed

Asahi ran the FEPC ad every month for two years and once every few months since 1976. This brought about an unexpected outcome.

Yomiuri Shimbun was the first one to react. Its PR section requested FEPC to place the ads on Yomiuri too, saying, “Nuclear power generation was introduced by our President Shoriki Matsutaro (the first president of the Atomic Energy Commission). By having only our rival Asahi carrying the ads, we are losing our face.”

Mainichi Shimbun also made the same request to FEPC. However, the newspaper at that time covered campaigns against nuclear power plants as well as a series of articles supporting consumers’ opposition activities.

Suzuki told Mainichi’s PR department, “What is your company’s policy on energy issues? If you think opposition (to nuclear energy) is worthwhile for the society, why don’t you just stick to the opposition? If you encourage consumers’ campaigns and threaten corporate operations, you will eventually lose ads in your paper.”

According to Suzuki, Mainichi Shimbun promised to deal with nuclear energy-related issues more carefully and it terminated the series covering consumers’ campaigns.

“Every year on ‘Atomic Energy Day’, we have been able to place the government’s ads promoting nuclear power generation in local newspapers throughout the country. I believe this was also realized by our ad carried by Asahi,” said Suzuki, indicating that “N-power money” bought the entire newspaper industry.