The following is from Kazue Fujiwara's stunning and eye-opening effort published in the recently released monthly magazine HANADA Selection.
It is a re-transmission of a chapter published initially on 2018-04-24 under the title.
Her title as a blogger means that the Internet is the most incredible library in the history of humanity,
It is the Internet and the monthly magazines, including HANADA, to which I have come to refer, that people like her are disseminating, revealing the truth...
It reveals that mass media such as newspapers, TV, and weekly magazines are untrue.
This genuine effort reveals the lousiness of the existing mass media in Japan and spells their demise.
It is a genuine effort and a treatise that must be read not only by all Japanese citizens but also by people worldwide.
Emphasis in the text other than the headline is mine.
The "News Station" Manipulation of Impressions
Who are "the people?"
What was apparent in the TV coverage in 2017 was irrational attacks on the regime using fake news.
To cite an example, The TBS "Hiruobi!" report on the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly speaker's refusal to shake hands, Fuji TV's "Viking" report on bureaucrats falling asleep at a Diet committee meeting, TBS "NEWS23" and "Sunday Morning" reports with 22,000 retweets, and TV Asahi's "News Station" report on the Shinzo Abe Memorial Elementary School's blacked-out building.
What tends to be overlooked amidst all this is the old-fashioned public opinion polling, which conveniently talks about the "will of the people" that has continued unbroken from the past.
Since Prime Minister Abe began discussing constitutional reform, the use of the word "the people" has become extremely common on TV.
Among others, "News Station" frequently used the word "the people" in its studio talk and repeatedly criticized the administration in the name of "the people."
While it is healthy for the media to criticize the administration based on objective evidence, it is not healthy to abuse the term "the people" without a clear definition.
In this article, I will point out the unreasonable use of the words "the people" and "the will of the people" in TV reporting, focusing on the case of "News Station."
In Japanese, the word "kokumin" is used as a common noun to describe individual members of a nationality and as a collective noun to mean a group of members.
For this reason, the word "nation" alone cannot distinguish whether it is an "individual nation," a "part of the nation," or "all the nation.
It is where the "ambiguity of logic" arises.
A proposition in logic takes one of the following four forms.
code quantifier subject copula predicate type example
A All S are P universal affirmative All humans are mortal.
E No S are P universal negative No humans are perfect.
I Some S are P particular affirmative Some humans are healthy.
O Some S are not P particular negative Some humans are not old.
Naturally, the truth of the proposition "the people are" or "the people are not" will change depending on whether it means "all the people" or "some of the people.
It can be said that mass media reports are using this trick to disguise the word "the people," which actually means "some of the people," as if it meant "all the people," and cunningly report impressions.
For example, if only a portion of the public has doubts about an issue in national politics, reporting that "the public has doubts" is not false reporting.
However, viewers who cannot read the context may misinterpret the report as meaning that "all the people (meaning almost all the people except themselves) have doubts," and if their pet theory contradicts the discourse, they may refrain from saying so publicly, thus falling into a [spiral of silence Incidentally, the "peer pressure" is also a factor that can cause a "silent spiral of silence.
Incidentally, in Japan, where peer pressure is more sensitive than in Western societies, such "self-restraint" is an everyday occurrence.
In addition, it is generally agreed that the adjective "all" can be omitted from propositions that are to be judged in the first person, in order to avoid complications.
For example, the proposition "man is a thinking reed" means "all men are thinking reeds," but the adjective "all" is usually omitted.
In this regard, too, it is easy to mislead people into thinking that when "some of the people" are referred to as "the people," they are "all the people.
In addition, the term "many of the people," often used by the mass media, is also problematic.
This term sounds almost universal, but it is clearly a "special term."
In some cases, it is not a special term close to a full term but a special term close to zero.
For example, the 100 or so people participating in the "protest in front of the National Diet" introduced by the mass media with the pillow talk "many people" are "many people" when compared to two or three people, but they are only one out of 1,000,000 people in the entire Japanese population.
Even if 10,000 people gather together, they are only one in 10,000.
To call these 100 people a "large number of people" is misleading and far removed from the reality of the situation.
This article continues.
2024/3/27 in Tokyo
