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2012 October 3 - 9 TOP3 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

NRA retracts policy of barring Akahata from briefing room

The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) on October 2 finally announced that it will retract a policy of excluding Akahata from press conferences.

Public criticism has pushed the NRA to stop daring to lock out Akahata at any cost by making different excuses on different days.

On September 25, the nuclear regulatory agency in charge of NRA administrative affairs proclaimed that it will shut out organs of “specific ideas and principles” from regular news briefings with the excuse of maintaining fairness and neutrality. The authority also mentioned that it will restrict the news gathering activities of freelance journalists if they write articles based on “specific ideas and principles”.

Akahata on the next day reported the move as the day’s top news story, soon generating 21,000 hits to the article on the Akahata website.

During the second press conference held later in the day, reporters and journalists of other news media posed questions one after another in regard to the NRA policy of excluding Akahata. The spokesperson this time reversed the earlier excuse of the need to exclude “specific ideas and principles” and instead raised a “because they are political party organs” excuse.

On September 27, Akahata reporters again spoke out against the move. The authority then raised a question of a lack of space, saying, “Due to the limited space in the conference room, we cannot accommodate more reporters.”

To this new version of excuse, the mainstream papers, including Mainichi and Tokyo, ran an article calling it into question. The Tokyo Shimbun quoted a person who was in the conference room, “It is just a pretext because one third of the seats were empty.”

Also at the weekly anti-nuke protest (Sep28) in front of the prime minister’s office, many demonstrators complained about the NRA policy, saying, “It promised before that it would work to ensure the transparency of the atomic energy administration.”

However, the NRA still kept its initial policy, saying, “We will ask party organs not to come and will not change this policy.”

Akahata on October 1 made an inquiry about the criteria for determining exclusion. A publicist of the nuclear regulatory agency responded that it will judge on the grounds of whether the reporter attended government-TEPCO joint press conferences.

These conferences had taken place between April 25 and December 16 by the Government-TEPCO Integrated Response Office to cope with the Fukushima nuclear crisis, requiring pre-registration for media attendance. Registered in advance, Akahata reporters were there. Not only conference minutes but also Qs and As with the Akahata reporters are on the Cabinet Secretariat website.

Pointing out this fact to the NRA, Akahata, public opinion, and some other conscientious media eventually cornered the NRA on its inconsistencies.

Akahata city news editor, Kurita Toshio stated, “It is a logical conclusion that the NRA shifted to allow Akahata reporters to take part in its news conferences. We’d like to thank everyone for raising their voices of protest and supporting us. We will keep putting all our efforts into gathering information and reporting the nuclear-related news from the standpoint calling for the immediate withdrawal from nuclear power generation.”