I understood why the mass media were trying to cover it up.

Since I myself had viewed the exhibition shortly after it opened, I understood why the mass media were trying to cover it up.
They wanted to portray the situation as if freedom of expression were being suppressed in Japan by a group of right-wingers.
June 7, 2020
The following is from Ryusho Kadota’s serialized column published in today’s Sankei Shimbun, titled “The Era When You Could Get Away with Not Reporting the Truth Is Over.”
At 2:00 p.m. on June 2, a press conference was held at a hotel in Nagoya by Katsuya Takasu, Naoki Hyakuta, and others, announcing the launch of a recall campaign against Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura.
Last year, during the “After ‘Lack-of-Freedom-of-Expression’ Exhibition” held as part of the Aichi Triennale, works such as a portrait of Emperor Showa being burned with a blowtorch and trampled underfoot, and a tomb mocking Japan’s war dead, stirred controversy. When it became known that tax money had funded these displays, Dr. Takasu raised objections, saying, “We won’t allow our tax money to be used for this.”
The press conference lasted two hours and included a Q&A session with local journalists.
However, in the Tokyo editions of newspapers on June 3, only the Sankei ran an article headlined “Campaign to Remove Aichi Governor—Dr. Takasu: ‘I Cannot Support Him’.” Other papers completely ignored the event.
I have been addressing this issue repeatedly since last year.
The newspapers focused solely on the statue of the girl (symbolizing comfort women) and manipulated public perception by reporting that the flood of criticism against the exhibition came from a handful of right-wing or anti-Korean forces protesting that statue’s display.
In reality, the issue was the use of public funds for a collection of works filled with hatred toward Japan, including the examples mentioned earlier.
Since I had seen the exhibition right after it opened, I understood clearly why the media were hiding these facts.
They wanted to create the narrative that freedom of expression in Japan is under threat from the right-wing.
To do so, they had to hide the fact that the exhibition itself was filled with excessive hate against Japan.
As if coordinated, every major newspaper reported only that “there was a backlash against the statue of the girl,” minimizing the issue.
And this time, they went so far as to completely ignore the recall campaign itself.
Despite prominent political figures like Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura and Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura expressing support for the campaign, making it a highly newsworthy event, the newspapers chose to exercise their so-called “freedom not to report.”
Thus, the perception that “the truth is found online” has taken root among the public.
Newspapers, which publish only articles that suit their ideological agendas, have been abandoned by readers, and their circulation continues to plummet.
As I watched Dr. Takasu and others at the press conference, I vaguely thought to myself: “Whether newspapers choose to report this or not will reveal whether they have a future.”
As it turned out, only Sankei covered it.
For a long time, newspapers monopolized information, tailoring it to suit their own positions and distributing it to the public.
But the era in which they could get away with not reporting the truth is long over—yet they remain incapable of reform.
Will newspapers ultimately have no choice but to “disappear”?