Japan Facing Nightmare Scenario of Longer Lives, Low Unemployment, Less Crowding
Running out of people might seem a strange concern for a country that is ten times as densely populated as the United States.
CBS’s Horror Stories on National Debt Aren’t Actually All That Scary
The “economic textbooks” CBS cites in its warning on debt seem not to be very reliable.
‘The Japanese Were Already Defeated and Were Seeking Peace’
“By and large, the mass media don’t speak out, because they would essentially have to call the president a liar and challenge his official rationale.”
James Henry on Panama Papers, Sanho Tree on Hiroshima
We talk about using the Panama Papers to push for real change with investigative economist James Henry, and the dominant Hiroshima “narrative”—lamentable but necessary, ultimately saved more than it killed—with historian Sanho Tree.
Soundbites May 2015
Remembering ‘News Dissector’ Danny Schechter When I launched FAIR in 1986, we had virtually no allies in the mainstream media. Except for Danny, then a producer at ABC’s 20/20. He was full of encouragement—telling us how important that we launch this group to monitor corporate media misdeeds. He gave us at FAIR crucial advice in […]
NYT Reported Japanese Internment as ‘Pioneering Chapter in US History’
On this day in 1942 (3/24/42), the New York Times reported on one of the most shameful chapters in US history: the internment of US citizens and immigrants in camps solely because they or their ancestors came from Japan, a nation with which the United States was at war. That wasn’t how the Times […]
NYT: Okinawans’ ‘True Views’ Aren’t What They Say
One recent poll found 84 percent opposition on Okinawa to a new US base. And yet the New York Times tells readers that it knows better.
NYT Explains Peculiar Japanese Customs
The New York Times (3/17/11) presents a look at the Japanese government’s lack of candor about the Fukushima nuclear disaster. At first we’re given the impression that this is something cultural: “The less-than-straight talk is rooted in a conflict-averse culture that avoids direct references to unpleasantness.” We don’t have that problem, I guess. Then, we’re […]
For NYT, Okinawan Public Opinion a ‘Wrench,’ a ‘Thorn’ and a ‘Headache’
Today’s New York Times piece (11/29/10) on the re-election of a governor of Okinawa who opposes the U.S. military base there seems to treat the views of the People Who Live There as one thing to maybe think about, and an annoying, in-the-way thing at that, with residents’ resistance described, variously, as a “wrench,” a […]
The Unimaginably Awful Japanese Media
The New York Times (11/21/09) describes Japan’s elite “press clubs” as a century-old, cartel-like arrangement in which reporters from major news media outlets are stationed inside government offices and enjoy close, constant access to officials. The system has long been criticized as antidemocratic by both foreign and Japanese analysts, who charge that it has produced […]
WaPo Alarmed: Japan Health Insurance Actually Insures
A September 7 Washington Post report on Japanese healthcare claims that “more than one-third of the workers’ premiums are used to transfer wealth from the young, healthy and rich to the old, unhealthy and poor.” Which Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 9/7/09) understatedly calls “a striking statement”: Fire insurance transfers wealth from people who don’t […]
The Trouble With Japanese Media
According to today’s New York Times (5/29/09), there’s a scandal brewing in the Japanese media. Apparently in its coverage of a current political scandal, the Japanese press has “reported at face value a stream of anonymous allegations, some of them thinly veiled leaks from within the investigation.” The Times goes on to note that “big […]
NYT: Not Spending Is Not Saving
Economics blogger Dean Baker asserts that “about the only thing that readers can learn from an article on Japan in the business section today” is that “The New York Times Doesn’t Like Japan” (Beat the Press, 2/22/09). Among the piece’s “variety of complaints about Japan’s economy, many of which are contradictory,” is “the standard line […]
