NHK demands Asahi Shimbun correct report on political pressure

Japan Policy & Politics, Jan 18, 2005

TOKYO, Jan. 14 Kyodo

(EDS: COMBINING STORY HEADLINED 'POLITICAL PRESSURE ALLEGATION ON NHK TO BE PURSUED IN DIET')

Japan Broadcasting Corp. said Friday it has demanded that the Asahi Shimbun newspaper correct a story it ran saying the public broadcaster altered under political pressure a 2001 television program on a mock tribunal on Japan's use of wartime ''comfort women.''

''The story reported by the Asahi Shimbun distorts the facts to suggest we altered the program in response to political interference,'' the broadcaster, known as NHK, said in a protest letter to the publisher.

It demanded the daily apologize, give a full explanation and publish a correction.

The Asahi Shimbun said, ''We repeatedly interviewed the people concerned, including two lawmakers and senior NHK officials, before releasing the article. We don't believe the article constitutes a distortion of facts.''

The program's chief producer Satoru Nagai, in a news conference Thursday, said ''We were ordered to alter the program before it was aired. I would have to say that the alteration was made against the backdrop of political pressure.''

In December, Nagai demanded that NHK's legal compliance panel accept whistle-blowers' pleas to probe the case as a possible violation of the broadcasting law, which guarantees freedom of broadcast program production.

On Friday, NHK said the story published Wednesday is erroneous as current Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Shoichi Nakagawa -- one of the two ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers mentioned in the article -- met NHK officials over the program only after it was aired in January 2001, not before airing as the paper claims.

NHK admitted to meeting another lawmaker -- Shinzo Abe, then deputy chief Cabinet secretary and current LDP acting secretary general -- before the broadcast but said the meeting took place at NHK's request to brief him on its annual budget.

Both Abe and Nakagawa have denied allegations about their role in the program, which featured a mock tribunal on Japan's wartime sex slavery.

Abe, however, on Wednesday had admitted to urging NHK officials to alter the program before it was aired as he felt the contents were ''biased.''

Meanwhile, opposition parties called Friday for clarification of the ''political pressure'' allegations and said they will look into the facts during a 150-day Diet session convening Jan. 21.

At a meeting of Diet affairs committee leaders of ruling and opposition parties, Yoshio Hachiro of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan said, ''This sort of political intervention and censorship is clearly prohibited by the Constitution and the Broadcast Law,'' according to participants of the session.

''Comments from people involved in the allegation are not consistent, and we need to pursue the truth,'' Hachiro said, showing readiness to follow up the issue in the Diet.

The program was originally to have included footage of a mock trial organized by a civic group that found the late Emperor Hirohito guilty of permitting wartime sex slavery. According to historians, Japan sent up to 200,000 women chiefly from the Korean Peninsula then under Japanese rule to front-line brothels to serve for Japanese soldiers, calling them comfort women.