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Comment by tkgally | Hacker News Reader

The linked article ends with this:

“Why the Japanese media has refused to identify the ‘religious group’ that formed the motive for the killing must remain as speculation at this juncture, though it reflects very poorly on Japan’s status as a democratic nation.”

It’s important to note that the Japanese media is not monolithic.

It’s true that the major newspapers (Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi, Nikkei, etc.) and the broadcaster NHK do not, as of this moment, seem to have named the religious group yet; nor do they seem to have explained why they are not naming it.

However, the group is named in online news stories by some of the weekly magazines [1, 2, 3] and will presumably be in their print editions within a few days. It’s all over Twitter etc., too.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220710064519/https://www.daily...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20220710061754/https://gendai.is...

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20220710062542/https://news.yaho...

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It was explained to me when I lived in Japan, that while there are many Japanese media companies that exist independently in Japan, they all have to go to one central government body to renew their licenses to exist. They get some leeway but it's it's not much

all these news organizations in Japan are nothing but government mouthpieces. When Abe was in power the journalists could not stop singing his praises and how smart the whole "Abenomics" was supposed to be.

It's not about "licenses to exist", but access to the press clubs (kisha clubs). Basically, if the government doesn't like what you print/say, you get frozen out the clubs and hence out of all government news.

https://freespeechdebate.com/discuss/an-impregnable-fortress...

Kinda like how the threat of revoking the press's access to the White House keeps them toeing the establishment line

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/white-house-press-passes...

That worked well. /s

This is the same in every country, including the US where entire agencies will just stop talking to you if you piss them off (especially police departments.) It's one of the ways we get all this propaganda even though we have a nominally "free" press.

It's not "the same" at all. It's a matter of degrees, which make a huge difference.

It's no different at all. You'll be excluded from press clubs and conferences just the same. Identical situation.

You can piss people/agencies off anywhere, true. But, the bar for what is expected to be tolerable behavior/reporting is vastly different.

not really. Japan runs under a unitary government that has almost exclusively been controlled by a single party since the post-war era.

The US is a federalized country with quite big cultural differences between states, and at least alternates between two major parties, and frequently shifting administrations. You can at most get canceled by one side. Japan is centralized and monolithic to an extent that really has no parallel in any other democratic country.

> Japan is centralized and monolithic to an extent that really has no parallel in any other democratic country

Singapore?

The press doesn’t just toe the official line, they actively attack opposite viewpoints.

The previous poster did say "democratic". Despite the fig leaf of elections, Singapore has been ruled by the same party since independence, which straight up owns all licensed newspapers, TV and radio stations.

Bonus points: the TV/radio wing has the delightfully Orwellian name of MediaCorp, and MediaCorp Radio at one point had the amazing slogan "MediaCorp Radio: Your choice!".

so what makes Japan more democratic? (is there some power consolidation index that can distinguish between Singapore and Japan effectively?)

The Japanese ruling party has actually lost power and smoothly transitioned.

> The LDP has been in power almost continuously since its foundation in 1955—a period called the 1955 System—except between 1993 and 1994, and again from 2009 to 2012.

in theory there's no problem with this, after all if they represent the plurality ... just as in theory many political systems should work just fine.

and it's certainly possible that this is what the vast majority of people there wants, so it might score 100% on "democracy", even if there are certain very obvious problems (let's say their insane justice system, or the simple fact that their population is both shrinking and ageing)

Opposition candidates who might have a chance are not systematically made ineligible on bogus charge of tax evasion or contempt of court like in Singapore.

As an example, John Tan was disqualified for standing as a candidate to the parliament in 2019 because he posted a Facebook post in support of an activist who posted than Malaysian courts were more independent than Singapore ones in trials involving politicians.

That's not really relevant. The causes are the same (they don't like what you say) and the effects are the same (you don't get to say it.) However you get from A to be, you get from A to B.

With police departments, it might be worse. Imagine any local news outlet frozen out of police communications. The choice is to cease to exist, or to fire or demote the person that the cops want fired or demoted. If you live in the US, the reason you've seen 900 videos of cops dancing with children, opening fire hydrants, and handing out toys (on every network news show on the same day) is because they're press released by the cops, and there will be retaliation if the videos don't get on the air.

"This is the same in every country, including the US where entire agencies will just stop talking to you if you piss them off"

They only stop talking to you through official channels. There will always be leakers, disgruntled employees and others willing to talk to you anonymously or unofficially. Not to mention that you can talk to people and ask questions without announcing that you're a reporter. This used to be called investigative journalism.

Investigative journalism is at an all time low at the moment: it's simply too expensive. Rephrased press releases from corporations, government bodies and celebrities sell just as well and the PR firms take full advantage of that.

>Investigative journalism is at an all time low at the moment: it's simply too expensive.

I would just say it's not as profitable. Many independent journalists seem to do investigative journalism on the cheap. Wikileaks comes to mind. Saying it' too expensive, to me, denotes that they are unable to do it and be a sustainable enterprise, which is probably not accurate.

It is not that frequent and it is difficult/expensive to verify those stories. Plus, anonymous/unofficial source is not much. To large extend, it amounts to gossip and a lot of it is basically unuseable.

Beat reporting and investigative journalism are very different "genres" of journalism.

> They only stop talking to you through official channels. There will always be leakers, disgruntled employees and others willing to talk to you anonymously or unofficially.

You cannot sustain beat reporting by relying on leakers and disgruntled employees. Furthermore, anonymous sources are not credible (ie, the news-consuming public largely does not trust them).

Most of the time, simple facts need to be reported and the only way to do that is by talking to credible sources that have been developed over time. Not all journalism is investigative - what happens when you want to report on a new housing development but you've burned all your sources because you only talk to leakers and disgruntled employees? Or you're reporting on a crime and need to talk to some cops?

> Not to mention that you can talk to people and ask questions without announcing that you're a reporter.

City officials are pretty well trained to know when the person on the other end of the line is a reporter. Not to mention how incredibly unethical this is (won't even start on the legal issues here).

Even they often try to cross the line, all German public agencies including police are required (by law in the states, by constitution for the federal level) to answer journalists' questions.

Yes and no.

Trump actually had a reporter's white house press credentials revoked and a court reversed it.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-reporter/u-s-ap...

The court does recognize the government has a right to prevent unruly behavior. But once it creates a forum with rules on who attends; it simply can not target those who disagree with it's speech.

Yes, American agencies have stonewalled in the past but the 1st and 14th amendments do place restrictions and practices the governments must follow or their acts can be blocked and that American courts do uphold. As far as I know most countries do not have these practices.

I like the model of ths German Bundespressekonferenz where an organization made up of journalists invites the German goverment for press conferences instead of the other way around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundespressekonferenz#Organisa...

Can the journalist organization exclude its members if they break ranks, so to speak?

Tilo Jung[0] has bee annoying the government spokes persons with uncomfortable questions for years. I read that some other journalists are uncomfortable with his questions since they fear that the government might decide to just not show up anymore (everybody is aware that the Bundespressekonferenz is a quite unique arrangement) but they still let him show up and ask questions. He does really valuable work imo and publishes all Bundespressekonferenzen on his youtube channel[1].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilo_Jung [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv1WDP5EiipMQ__C4Cg6aow

> I read that some other journalists are uncomfortable with his questions since they fear that the government might decide to just not show up anymore

The thing in his early days was that he asked and "demanded" a proper answer. But often times the politicians don't want to answer to the question stated. Now you can waste everybody's time and ask again and again, without getting an answer (which is useful if you stream the event) or accept that there won't be an answer and move to the next topic (which is good if you want to write an article)

But meanwhile Jung doesn't play that game that much anymore, but asks good and precise questions and more often then leaves it there.

I'd love to see more follow up questions of the sort "Excellent answer, if I had asked about X (e.g. who to blame for high taxes), but instead, my question was Y (what are your plans regarding tax policy?)".

It seems that Scottish interviewer Andrew Neil has a reputation for this kind of implacable questioning. Any others?

That can work in a 1:1 setting, where you are trying to pin down somebody.

In that described setting here, you have journalists who want to write an article about current topics. In the article they can write "they avoided answering XYZ" and given limited time it is more worthwhile to switch topics. Repeating a non-answer doesn't make the article longer.

In the 1:1 setting the way they try to weasel out and avoid answering can be educational to the audience and can narrow down the topic a bit.

Yeah I wonder how dumb journalists are sometimes for accepting evasive answers from politicians.

If they don't want to say something they should just say that. I totally agree with this guy tbh.

No.

https://www.bundespressekonferenz.de/verein/satzung

I'm going to contradict sibling and say "Yes".

It's just a Verein (untranslateable, but let's say 'private association/club') with members.

They can refuse to accept members for any reason, and they can kick out members for the reasons they themselves specify.

Currently this section (§14) reads they can kick out members "that are a danger to the purpose of the association or are harmful to its reputation or interests".

So (read cynically) pretty much any reason.

Note that in this case, a two-thirds majority in the general assembly of members have to confirm the kick-out, which is judging by my experience in other associations a really high bar to clear.

In any case, such a decision can be review by civil court as well whether it actually met the conditions laid out in their charter.

Surely that can only work at the will of the government - if I'm the German chancellor and decide I don't like it, I can just tweet that I'll be making a statement outside my front door; the first time all the blogger hacks will show up and get a great scoop; the second time everyone will?

So instead a foreign company gets all that power?

That’s the UK system. Almost all the press is owned by foreign billionaires.

Well for one Twitter was just an example, more that that is what I imagine they would probably use than anything else, not central to the point.

But also, I'm not saying it's better or whatever or making any sort of judgement? I'm just saying I don't think the media-led organisation has 'all that power' - they'll just go where all the news is, because it's their job, and the government (currently) lets that be where they want?

Twitter doesn't have any more power in that example, it's also just the avenue my hypothetical chancellor self chose to announce a press conference, he could have done it on Facebook, or Volksbook, or whatever, it's up to him, that was my point.

> It's not about "licenses to exist", but access to the press clubs (kisha clubs)

Its the same in the UK.

UK "political editors" working for the larger media outlets are granted lobby passes, which they guard like some precious gem stone.

Lobby passes grant the journalists free access to certain parts of the Parliament buildings, in particular the lobby (hence the name of the pass !). It also grants them access to the Downing Street media briefings, which due to some obscure tradition, are always held behind closed doors.

That's why many UK "political editors" ask such dumb limp questions of UK leaders. Its because they run scared of having their sacred lobby pass taken away from them.

> That's why many UK "political editors" ask such dumb limp questions of UK leaders

To be fair, politicians still feel the need to get on TV and face Paxman and Andrew Netflix and so on, who are happy to take them to pieces whatever their personal political leanings. That plus PMQs and constituency duties, and I think UK politicians get grilled sufficiently…

I lived in London a couple of years in the early 2000s and me and my roommates used to watch Jeremy Paxman interview politicians and we were more or less in chock that he actually pushed them when they tried their usual non-answers.

Now, we were quite young and didn’t really know that much about British politics to get that much out of it but it was so refreshing to see a interviewer that didn’t just back down like they do back in my home country.

> Jeremy Paxman interview politicians and we were more or less in chock that he actually pushed

Yes, Paxman was good at pushing politicians.

But he was not a lobby pass holder either, AFAIK. So he had nothing to loose.

Politicians with a grilling fetish came to see him on Newsnight knowing exactly what they would be facing.

But he equally represented a generation of political journalists that seems to have been lost with the newer generation. The new generation of political journalists seems to have lost that "dog with a bone" sprit, even those who are free of the self-imposed restrictions of the lobby pass.

The Johnson partygate, for example, came out of leaks rather than tough questioning of politicians. There are rumours around that some of the more high-profile lobby journalists were at said parties....

Which is why "Prime Minister's Questions" time is so valuable and entertaining.

"if the government doesn't like what you print/say, you get frozen out the clubs and hence out of all government news"

What happened to independent investigative reporting?

They don’t get invited and do their own investigation and reporting instead of paraphrasing government announcements.

I think it’s the same pattern in many countries, where there will be two different rythme: almost immediate news with official communication coming in near real-time, and a second wave of news from journalists who took more time to form an opinion/check what they want to publish. Both waves happen in big newspapers, independent ones only bet on the second wave.

are we pretending that access to govt info and its subsequent quid-pro-quo is not a MSM dynamic basically everywhere?

There is no licensing of the print or online media in Japan. However, there are a number of factors that effectively limit the freedom of many media outlets.

The kisha clubs [1], which control media access to government officials and the police, are restricted to reporters from major media organizations. The tabloid press frequently complains about those restrictions and use those restrictions as justification for their less savory reporting methods.

The libel and privacy laws are fairly strict [2, 3] and have been tightened in recent years, making publications more hesitant to report negative or personal information about individuals, including politicians. Some religious groups have used those laws to suppress negative reporting; as soon as I noticed on Friday afternoon that the mainstream media weren’t giving the name of the religious group, I wondered if fear of lawsuits was the reason. (I still don’t know.)

Extremist groups have targeted Japanese media, and have sometimes attacked [4] or killed [5] journalists, for reports that the groups didn’t like about the Imperial family or historical matters. This can make journalists hesitant to raise controversial topics.

The major newspapers are published by large conglomerates that have diverse business interests. The weekly magazines have, over the years, reported many examples of stories that were suppressed by their larger competitors because of conflicts of interest. An amusing one that I remember is when a magazine was not allowed to include the term shōgi daoshi—literally, “falling over like shogi pieces”—in their regular advertisement in a daily newspaper; they wanted to use it to describe an accident where people were crushed in and killed in a crowd, but that newspaper ran a major shogi tournament and wouldn’t allow the term shōgi to be used in a negative context. Some weekly magazines that frequently publish reports of salacious scandals about celebrities and politicians refrain from publishing similar reports about well-known writers, because their parent companies depend on work by those writers for other publications.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kisha_club

[2] https://kellywarnerlaw.com/japan-defamation-laws

[3] https://www.omm.com/resources/alerts-and-publications/alerts...

[4] https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/噂の眞相

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomohiro_Kojiri

> An amusing one that I remember is when a magazine was not allowed to include the term shōgi daoshi—literally, “falling over like shogi pieces”

An amusing one on multiple levels. Standard shogi pieces don't fall over! They're not miniature statues like in Western chess, but flat reversible tiles [0]. It's like it was written by a Western journalist who needed to translate his idiom into Japanese.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Sh...

I don’t have any shogi pieces handy—I’m more of a lapsed go player myself—but can’t they be stood on their ends like dominos? Image searches for shōgi daoshi in Japanese yield a lot of pictures like this:

https://www.photo-ac.com/main/search?q=将棋倒し&srt=dlrank&qt=&p...

Western chess pieces don't fall over like dominoes either, since they're usually kind of rounded...

Western Chess, they got cowboy hats? Asking for a Persian friend...

Well, they do have horses!

I'm talking about the game codified in Europe in the late middle ages, and known as "chess" throughout the English-speaking world today.

It doesn't make sense to attribute its origins to Persia in the context of specifically distinguishing it from other shatranj/chaturanga derivatives, like shogi.

In the US all radio and TV stations also have to get and renew licenses from the government to be allowed to broadcast.

And online people have to effectively renew a license from Google to broadcast

Not really.

TV station: You operate without a license or outside of its bounds, you've committed a criminal act. The government can use their monopoly on force to compel you to give up your resources (fines) or your freedom (jail time).

Youtube: You break the terms of service and are no longer allowed to use their service.

There are other video platforms, there are ways to self host video. No one needs a "license" from Google to get their video content available to the world.

If you want to swim in Google's pool and get the benefits of hanging around the other millions of people in Google's pool, maybe it's a good idea not to take a ** in it.

Google markets YouTube as a platform for everyone. Anyone can open an account. There is no membership fee, or political party affiliation required. Their advertising rates and revenue depend on having the largest possible audience. They present themselves as a "public square" and thus should be obligated to allow free speech as one has at a public square.

A public square in what country?

There are checks and balances on a democracy that do not involve leaving the country. The government can not legally damage you without massive oversight.

There are no such checks and balances on google, and they can destroy your livelihood on a whim without even acknowledging you exist

Canada wants to implement this under the Trudeau liberal government. It's been a little disturbing to watch a Canadian liberal government take steps in the direction of totalitarian control since the beginning of the pandemic. When was the last time the political right has positioned themselves in opposition to the left in defense of free speech and individual rights and freedoms? Strange times.

It's not just Canada. "Free Speech" is no longer a part of modern left-of-center policy in general. Even the American ACLU no longer defines itself as a defender of free speech the way it used to. The argument (for what it's worth) is that the far-right is defending hate speech through the concept of free speech and so free speech is no longer worth defending as an ideal.

Would you mind linking to a source about the ACLUs changing relationship to free speech? I just looked at their website and it seems like they are still centering free speech as one of their major issues and a list of actions they have taken in recent years includes support of e.g. the NRA and an anti-muslim group.

You can tell by their twitter that their actions don't match their stated stance. They've become a woke social justice organization like many other institutions, repeating mantras such as: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1269413639464849409

While I can see why that tweet leads you to categorize them as "woke", I don't personally see how that has anything to do with their actions matching their stated stances, particularly as it relates to free speech.

In case other readers would like a quick summary of these articles:

- The ACLU faced internal divisions after defending a far-right protest that devolved into a riot of hate-speech that got someone killed.

- The ACLU also argued in court that teachers, when engaging with students in their professional capacity, should respect to gender identity of students.

It seems that a subset of the ACLU has taken the stance that defending free-speech as a cloak for hate would, on balance, reduce rather than increase the rights and liberties of the broader population.

This is the classic paradox of tolerance, it is not a new situation, nor should it be mysterious, controversial, or surprising. It is something that all of us must consider in our daily lives.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html is one such source.

Note that the shift has been quite recent (more or less since 2017) and not uniform; the ACLU does still take up free speech cases, while avoiding others, depending on various things.

Related, but not mentioned in the above articles, are tweets from prominent ACLU lawyers calling for banning certain books (see https://reclaimthenet.org/strangio-shrier-free-speech-suppre... for a reference, but this was quite widely reported). On the one hand, said lawyers have a right to their own opinions on their own personal twitter accounts. On the other hand, the ACLU never bothered to say that this opinion does not represent the ACLU organizational position....

Thank you - unfortunately I don't have access to the nytimes article (and am not willing to subscribe to get it). However, your comment did help me find other articles that seem relevant to this discussion.

In case it is of value to others, one such article is https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/10/26/why-the-aclu-is-rig... - it definitely has a pro-ACLU slant, but I thought it did a reasonable job of explaining the dynamics of the recent discussion/shifts within the ACLU with respect to free speech

My apologies; I forgot that the nytimes is all paywalled now...

I should make a habit of loading things in a private browsing tab as a test.

You should be able to see the whole Times article at https://web.archive.org/web/20220616003939/https://www.nytim... if you are interested in a less-pro-ACLU take.

The right campaigned on cancelling Kaepernick and right-wing religious universities are notoriously against free expression.

  > modern left-of-center policy in general

serious question: were "liberals" really very much "left" in the first place? maybe culturally left i suppose, but economically and politically?

If you are interested in the media in Japan and how it chooses to report or not report news I recommend the book "Exposure: Inside the Olympus Scandal". It tells the story of loss hiding at Olympus. Especially interesting are the chapters about how difficult it was to get any news coverage of some extremely suspicious things.

That and for a more general take on why Japan isn't the heaven-on-earth that weeaboos hold it up to be, I recommend "Japan - a reinterpretation" by Patrick Smith. It has a lot about freedom of the press and the Japanese media landscape, especially the infamous "Kisha Clubs" (self-censoring).

Maybe they don't want copycats.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5296697/

It's not really any different than the US.

Lots of information tends to be "widely known" online to those who care to dig, but the mainstream outlets stick to some narrative that is best described as "half truth".

Yes indeed. And if you really want to go down a rabbit hole, test it out on the subjects that find the likes of CNN & FOX agreeing in lockstep. More often than not it's to hide the truth than to report it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9rbHpA_6W4

I find a lot of that information is in the mainstream media… just that you have to pay attention.

Case in point, the death of Epstein.

I'm genuinely curious. What hidden but verifiable facts have been hidden from the public with respect to the Epstein death?

Not much was hidden, the issue is the pantomime that it was completely reasonable to expect that a suicide of such a figure when the cameras were off and the guards weren't aware the cameras were off is a complete coincidence, and playing coy with his connections to the elite. Those facts weren't hidden but they weren't mentioned far less than they should and eventually not at all. Beyond that the media failed in their duty to confront the authorities.

In the case of Epstein, journalists weren't allowed by their editors to do their jobs.

The death of Epstein was reported based on the observable facts. Realistically, he probably killed himself and he probably never had any incriminating evidence on anyone to warrant a hit. The conspiracy theories are all 99% speculation. The fact that notable people travelled with him isn't proof of anything. We have some actual evidence against Prince Andrew and it's all gotten in the press. We have no proof on anyone or anything else beyond what was charged in court against him and Maxwell. Reporting anything else would be unethical and unprofessional.

It's interesting that even in US papers, the sudden trend of Russian oligarchs to become suicidal or murder-suicidal overnight is largely reported at face value, at best giving the context about how suddenly and frequently it is occurring.

Most mainstream press won't report things they can't prove. When they report on a Russian journalist falling out a window, they will usually mention that lots of opposition journalists have fallen out of windows and let readers draw conclusions, but we still have absolutely no direct proof they're being assassinated. I think news consumers have started to change their expectations and just really, really want pat answers fed to them rather than reading about what we actually know.

There's lots of information out there that's widely known that is true. There's also lots of widely known information that is untrue.

I ran it through Google Translate because I was curious. It appears to be something called the Unification Church?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church

> The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, widely known as the Unification Church or Unificationism, is a new religious movement whose members are called Unificationists and sometimes colloquially Moonies.[2] It was officially founded on 1 May 1954 under the name Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC) in Seoul, South Korea by Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012), a Korean Messiah claimant also known for his business ventures and engagement in social and political causes.[3][4][5][6]

> The beliefs of the Unification Church are based on Moon's book Divine Principle, which differs from the teachings of Nicene Christianity in its view of Jesus[7] and in its introduction of the concept of "indemnity".[8] The movement is well known for its unique "Blessing" or mass wedding ceremonies.[9]

> The Unification Church has been controversial, with some early critics calling it a dangerous cult.[10][11] It also has been controversial for its involvement in politics, which include anti-communism and support for Korean reunification.

Moonies used to be a big deal at college campuses in California. When my husband and I went to Berkeley in the 1970s, the Moonies were everywhere. They did many questionable things before fading away.

My husband is 4 years older than me - so he was not as aware of their recruitment practices. He said he was invited to dinner by a very attractive young woman who kept flirting with him all through dinner. She then invited him to a weekend retreat. He said he became suspicious and did not go. It was a good thing he did not go. By the time I went to Berkeley - we all knew about the retreats.

Yep I remember the "Moonie" cult in the news from the 1970s. They seemed to fade out after a while, like most fads do. I had no idea they were still operating.

They still own and publish the Washington Times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times

They also owned the University of Bridgeport until a few years ago.

Abe gave a speech at a Unification Church event commemorating 9/11 in 2021. The keynote speaker was Donald Trump:

https://twitter.com/koryodynasty/status/1436866339113627648?...

Moonies were prevalent in Chile later on, during the late 90s. The press would refer to them as “la secta Moon” (the Moon cult).

What would happen at the retreat? Just indoctrination?

Very heavy pressure to join and indoctrination. The pressure tactics were very coercive. Essentially thought reform via a high control group/environment. Eventually people would think they made the choice to join themselves and had come to their own conclusions but in fact it was essentially are manipulation.

What happened at the retreats? Quick search gave no answers...

Pressure to join and indoctrination

  >  She then invited him to a weekend retreat. He said he became suspicious and did not go

great article about that (infiltrating the moonies in san diego)

https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1980/may/08/cover-revere...

For those curious, the first article linked says it’s the Unification Church (Moonies).

Why aren't the major Japanese media outlets covering this angle before the polls close in Japan's upper house elections (today)?

Isn’t it controversial whether or not he did have a connection? There is a value of free speech in Japan but it’s not exactly like America’s, and I think the Japanese media would mostly avoid stirring the pot immediately prior to an election, and especially for a claim that may be unfounded.

I won’t argue whether their approach is the right one or not and this is just my opinion, but that seems like that would be why the major papers wouldn’t want to cover this angle to me.

Controversial in the sense that he’s on video as a presenter in one of their events.

It’s as controversial as the My Pillow guy having a connection to a political party. We don’t know whether he literally believes in what he’s saying, but we do know he’s being paid to speak for them.

But whether this is the cult he was killed for is yet to be confirmed. He also had heavy involvement with Soka Gakkai through his alignment with the Komeito party. They also drain people of their cash.

Strange. I don't see how it could be more controversial than his well known links to Nippon Kaigi.

I mean, the cult connection is only important for the fact that someone killed him for it. And I am going to guess that it tells you something about the deranged mind of the killer, and probably not much interesting about Abe.

Edit: I mean, come on, "newsflash: prominent politician involved in dubious business or accounting practices", you could probably have safely assumed it :)

It could be controversial because it's a Korean sect and Abe was a nationalist hardliner whose image was that he would make Japan "proud" again by refreezing relations with China and Korea.

So if he had connections to a Korean sect, and knowing what sects do, the next logical step would be to assume that he was controlled by or at least open to Korean interests, which is the opposite of what people elected him for, and would be a major, major scandal for him and his party.

Haha, yes, and that would be pretty deranged given that the Korean ultra-right/fascist movement is very supportive of Japanese fascism, no matter how loudly it denies, downplays, or asks to be thanked for atrocities committed against Koreans. And that includes the vast majority of nutty religious sects.

Edit: or to translate, the scandal would be "concern that fascist politician, might not be fascist enough" with an emphasis on "might" since it would be pure speculation

Very rare to meet someone who has a realistic view on modern Japan and calls these people what they really are. Nice to meet you!

Have you by any chance ever heard of Ryōichi Sasakawa? The man who created the „Nippon Foundation“ which runs a lot of „cultural exchange“ Institutes like Language schools etc. in Europe and maybe elsewhere.

His Wikipedia says he was a self-declared fascist. Can’t make it up.

> Isn’t it controversial whether or not he did have a connection?

Controversial like linking the Kashoggi's death to the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman[1], but then participating to the G20 summit in Riyadh or selling them billions worth of weapons (including combat aircrafts), like nothing happened?

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56213528

They mean controversial in the sense of totally nonsensical distraction in which the stakes are basically zero.

Not controversial as in, "of any real consequence"

It’s absolutely insane to me that people are criticizing the Japanese media over this. Why should we be amplifying a murder’s message? Don’t reward a man for shooting someone in the back.

After every mass shooting in the US I see widespread criticism of the media for sensationalism and turning mass murders into stars. Yet when another country follows this very advice, they’re criticized for a lack of free speech?

Knowledge and transparency is oxygen to a democracy. Without an informed populace you can not have an effective democracy.

I agree with the theme of your message, but people won't be educated unless they seek it out themselves beyond just what the media spouts. That is all too sadly very rare.

> Knowledge and transparency is oxygen to a democracy

Democracy can wait a week or two when a man is murdered that way

Freedom means also that you have to earn it, if people can't wait to speculate online about things that are still being investigated, they probably don't deserve it.

---

What if they waited a bit more before putting Lee Harvey Oswald on the front page of every newspaper? Maybe he would still be alive and we knew a lot more about what really happened.

What if Kennedy assassination happened today, with social media and the "pornography of violence"?

Think about it.

>Freedom means also that you have to earn it

Freedom isn't earned, authority is. Freedom is the default nature of man. Those in power who seek to limit freedom, must earn that right. And it can be quickly withdrawn.

> Freedom is the default nature of man

There's nothing natural in modern society.

The only natural freedom is the freedom to survive.

The lion cared not for our "freedom to survive", indeed I doubt the lions cared about property rights or the 2nd amendment either.

Freedoms, even when they are freedoms FROM a state entity, only exist because society came together, usually in the form of a state entity, to set norms and expectations and promises.

This sounds like an argument that could be used to justify slavery.

> Freedom is the default nature of man

In actual Nature, there is absolutely no default state of freedom. The default is to eat or get eaten. "Freedom" is a social construct.

Just _maybe_ there is some biological underpinning in the form of tit-for-tat based sets of defensive-oriented instincts. (If you don't hurt me, I'll not hurt you.)

The motives of a crazy person are far less important than a long list of important policy nuances though. Why give this one precedence in air time.

I would never criticize the media for indicating who did the killing, the weapon and how it was obtained, or the "mind set" (to the degree that is possible) of the killer. All of these things inform the populace. (And besides, does anyone think you could successfully suppress those?)

But of course I am not the "widespread criticism" you refer to.

It would be useful to point to the actual hypocrisy of a specific source/person — where this source/person was critical of the U.S. media amplifying a murderer's message but critical of Japan's refusal to do so.

This. Usually calm people in Japan rage now about that news is slow. People should be calm even in this situation.

It’s linked to too many hot button issues, and would have way more impact than just anger against a single cult.

If it was in the US context I would compare it to an alternative muslim cult founded in China and supporting the Palestinian regime. If someone shooting a US politician was found vaguely linked to that cult, it would be wiser to wait for a strong connection with the crime instead of just throwing around the information and have everyone go wild with the implications they want.

Only if it was supporting a muslims/chinese/palestinians who are known for their vociferous support of the republican party?

I mean, these groups tend to be ultra-right wing and the Korean ultra-right are very supportive of the japanese ultra-right wing, like Abe, who is grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, "the devil of manchuria" and thinks grandpa was a lovely guy.

Edit: Nobusuke, not Nobuo, Nobuo is the other grandson who is defence minister. My bad.

The issue would be to bring all that cult and culturally heavy discussion in the spotlight when there's still a chance it's completely irrelevant to the incident.

The same way we wouldn't be digging deep on where the guy ate at lunch if there wasn't enough link (I know some newspaper do, but imo they shouldn't)

My point is that there are much more interesting discussions to be had, like how Abe's grandfather was a class A war criminal who the US sprung from prison and spared the death penalty cos they thought he would be a good pro-US element in Japanese politics. How he then founded the party Abe is a member of. Or any of what Abe's politics are. But there is zero mention of any of it in any western press... ever... Even when very relevant events are happening. Even, for example, when China and South Korea are united in condemnation. Which is strange, because aren't South Korea and Japan supposed to be allies with the US, and all about containing China?

So I'm wondering why the "suppression" of that news is so much less interesting than the "suppression" of whatever gobbledygook Crazy McShootyFace believes?? :)

Unification Church of the World Peace [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church

And that name is?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church

But it’s also in the submission, literally the first sentence…

Thanks for linking to more information about it.

Yes, but the the poster did the same what the newspapers he mentioned did - he avoided mentioning the religious group by name.

It really reminds me somehow of the police press relationship described in '64' (Rokuyon) by Hideo Yokoyama

NHK as of tonight have named the organization and broadcasted part of Abe's speech on TV.

translate.google to en:

[1] https://archive.is/4wu9v

[2] https://archive.is/xhOAW

Seems to me to be good policy not to discuss anything about assassins' motives, names or show photos to avoid accidentally glorifying the act or encouraging others who want to get attention. Why is the silence assumed to be a cover up instead of proper media etiquette?

Maybe, or maybe it’s just becoming obvious Japan’s “democracy” isn’t functioning at the level we’d all hope for that scares us all a little bit?

It's also quite chauvinist to suggest that the major newspapers cannot arrive at the same conclusion about disclosure independently, and pretty ignorant to imply that suppressing information is inconsistent with democracy.

> pretty ignorant to imply that suppressing information is inconsistent with democracy

It sort of is inconsistent with democracy. People should know for whom and for what they vote.

Is it? In most democracies in the world there are things you cannot publish even if they are true - Britain for example still maintains an official state censor, and even in the US there are still some state secrets that you cannot publish regardless of how true they are. Britain and many other countries also maintain a right to privacy that protects non-public-figure individuals against salacious soap-opera tabloid shit - you can't just go telling the whole world that Joe Q Public cheated on his wife, even if it's absolutely true because it's not a good idea for the panopticon to be pointed at the powerless like that.

Again, as should be said every time the topic comes up here on HN - the idealization of absolute and unlimited free speech is kind of a uniquely American phenomenon and even then it is not quite absolute. The rest of the world views freedom of speech as a right that needs to be limited and balanced like every other right.

Everyone has frequently talked about how we shouldn't be having media broadcast the manifestos of these shooters and glorifying them, how the media should just suppress information about them and refuse to publish their pictures and only and talk about them in the abstract... isn't that exactly what is going on here? This guy killed the prime minister and you want to know exactly what his cause was in exacting detail...

Britain’s an interesting case, but I don’t think it makes the point you think it does. Yes, there’s a censor, but the real reason all the newspapers report the same thing at the same time is cultural a) newspaper ownership is concentrated amongst a very small group of people, most of whom are billionaires b) they employ people who they trust to do the right thing c) journalism in the U.K. operates a revolving door with the conservative party’s communications division d) partly as a result of that and partly as a result of falling revenues, most journalist's idea of what good journalism is consists of asking two people what they think and reporting what they say e) this makes them extremely dependent on the lobby system, which is pretty similar to press clubs e) Blair set a precedent for cutting funding to the BBC if it said things it didn’t like, and the current government hasn’t hesitated to threaten to do it again f) this culture is so ingrained it has spread even to those publications that theoretically shouldn’t be affected.

So the situation in Japan is pretty similar to that in the U.K. You just need to identify the levers.

> c) journalism in the U.K. operates a revolving door with the conservative party’s communications division

Actually the prime minister’s press office, and to be fair Labour perfected this process thanks to Alastair Campbell.

> and even in the US there are still some state secrets that you cannot publish regardless of how true they are

That is simply not true. There are many examples where USA newspapers published leaked secrets and the journalist were not convicted for it in any case.

The Pentagon Papers come to mind as the most famous example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers

The claim was that there are some secrets, not all secrets which is the claim you countered.

Ok. There are no secrets “you cannot publish” in the USA. Prove it otherwise. Either by citing law, or even better by citing precedent.

Ever heard of Assange?

(Also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_secret among others; there is a ton of those.)

Your link does not seem to contradict what i’m saying “ The constitutionality of declaring entire categories of information preemptively classified has not been definitively tested in the courts.”

You said:

>There are no secrets “you cannot publish” in the USA.

As evidenced above there sure are. The “constitutionality” doesn’t matter.

Looking at the DoJ's indictment of Assange -- they stated:

The indictment also charges Assange for his posting of a narrow subset of classified documents on WikiLeaks that allegedly identified the names of human sources—including local Afghans and Iraqis who were assisting U.S. forces in theater, and those of journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates, and political dissidents living in repressive regimes. Assange thereby is alleged to have created grave and imminent risk to their lives and liberty.

(Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1165636/downl... )

That would appear to be a specific example of secrets that cannot be published?

"Born secret" and "born classified" are both terms which refer to a policy of information being classified from the moment of its inception, usually regardless of where it was created, and usually in reference to specific laws in the United States that are related to information that describes the operation of nuclear weapons.

"Again, as should be said every time the topic comes up here on HN - the idealization of absolute and unlimited free speech is kind of a uniquely American phenomenon and even then it is not quite absolute."

Yeah, I just got smacked down on here for suggesting that not sharing all the details, naming names, etc could be because they don't want to encourage copycats, and that the US could address some of it's violence via a law limiting the details they provide.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5296697/

>even in the US there are still some state secrets that you cannot publish regardless of how true they are.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. The "powers that be" have gotten drunk on their ability to not only hide information from the public, but more often than not to muddy it by releasing floods of false information so that people don't know what is what.

These are the same people we owe things like Operation Northwoods and MK-Ultra to, so they can't be trusted.

Yes, there is information that should not be printed, including that which clearly harms national security, like the locations of all the nuclear missiles. In the US, this happens by voluntary cooperation by the press. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship

This specific story is not one of them. It is useful to society to understand that cults destroying individuals' financial security can make them desperate enough to assassinate.

Not necessarily backing the decision of the Japanese newspapers here, but US politics is basically a circus of unsubstantiated allegations which are front and center because they get more eyeballs. Sensationalism is hardly a pillar of democracy. It's a scourge and the country would be better off if Fox, MSNBC, Twitter's apocalypse algorithms etc. were a little more reserved.

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