Amnesty International has expressed concern after Facebook blocked the content of Australian news outlets from its platform—a move the social media giant took in response to a proposed law to make large technology platforms pay publishers for linking to Australian news stories.
The time has come for foreign residents in Japan to rid themselves of self-marginalizing patterns of thought and to begin to embrace the notion that they live in Japan, work to the benefit of this country, pay their taxes, and thus have a claim on a certain set of rights.
Japanese parodist Mad Amano explains the purpose of political parody and describes Shinzo Abe’s efforts to suppress his work.
A statement has been issued by a group of foreign journalists in the wake of the recent controversy between the Tokyo Olympic Organising Committee and the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.
The artwork above appeared in the cover of the April 2020 issue of the Number 1 Shimbun, the monthly magazine of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. Weeks after it first appeared, the Tokyo Olympic Organising Committee demanded that it be withdrawn from public circulation.
Defense Minister Taro Kono’s denunciation of NHK and the mainstream news media as “fake news” for reporting that his ministry had decided to give up the Araya Training Area in Akita city as host for an Aegis Ashore facility was a cynical ploy on his part, but it did highlight once again that many people misunderstand the news media in rather fundamental ways.
The editors of the Japan Times published an announcement today regarding its now infamous “Editor’s Note” of November 2018, with the evident purpose of drawing a line under the affair and to recover their reputation for “fair, accurate and transparent journalism.” Unfortunately, it seems that the newspaper’s internal investigation bypassed all of the most serious and credible allegations.
Whereas most Japanese political parties, whether the ruling conservatives or the mainstream opposition, effectively have little in the way of fixed party policies, the Japan Communist Party, the nation’s oldest political party, is very different, taking its own platforms very seriously.
Shiori Ito won rape lawsuit damages in what may be indicative of the tide turning against Japan’s poor record on gender equality; but for now, Japan’s performance in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020, released last week, speaks of a grim reality.
Running the Shingetsu News Agency, a recurring theme among some of our critics is that they feel that our news service is politically biased. It’s now time to clear the air. We are guilty as charged. We are indeed politically biased… and so is every other news agency on Earth.
