Japan Press Weekly

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2008 June 11 - 17 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

NHK was unfair in reporting court ruling: watchdog group

A broadcast media watchdog group on June 10 determined that Japanese public broadcaster NHK was unfair in reporting on a lawsuit it was involved in.

On January 29, 2007, the Tokyo High Court acknowledged that NHK altered the contents of a program on Japan’s wartime sex slavery that aired in 2001, ordering it to pay compensation to the Violence Against Women in War-Network Japan (VAWW-NET Japan), which cooperated with NHK in producing the documentary and brought the case to court.

VAWW-NET Japan filed the complaint with the Broadcast and Human Rights/Other Related Rights Committee (BRC), claiming that NHK’s nightly news program “News Watch 9,” reported only its own interpretation on the court decision and showed interviews of two Liberal Democratic Party politicians, who were allegedly involved in the editing of the documentary.

BRC Chair Takeda Minoru pointed out that NHK was unfair because it only gave its own interpretation on the ruling without even mentioning the plaintiffs’ opinion.

He said that the public broadcaster should report the court ruling more carefully because it is involved in the case. He called on NHK to report on such controversial cases from various points of view.

The BRC did not ask NHK to redo the news program since it did not incorrectly report the contents of the ruling. - Akahata, June 11, 2008