Continuing my dirt-digging exercise in the last post, here are some edits that Nikkei, Japan’s leading business newspaper, has made about itself in the “Nihon Keizai Shimbun” article:
Deleted passage (2005): “The upper floors of the company headquarters are shared with (top business lobby) Nippon Keidanren headquarters, and there are critics who characterize its editorial stance as “the official gazette of Japan Inc.” I can’t tell if this is true from Google Maps (and I’ve never been there) but they are at least right freakin next to each other. Similar (and somewhat harsher) language has survived in the current article.
Deleted mention that the company plans to move its head quarters to Otemachi in 2011 (just the mention of Otemachi not the 2011 move). (2005) Mention of Otemachi now survives and the move is characterized as “part of redevelopment of the Otemachi area.”
Diluting responsibilty over its treatment of the three Japanese hostages in Iraq in April 2004 (edit made in April 2007): A passage which read “In its reporting, [Nikkei] posted the detailed addresses of the three hostages on the Web. While it deleted the information after reader complaints, the addresses were widely distributed and are belieted to have aided in the harassment, insults, and embarrassment endured by the victims’ families” was changed to include “as other companies did.”
An edit made over the same time period deleted a passage: “One reason the mass media does not report these several scandals (including an insider trading scandal and a faked photograph that I will mention later) despite their being open to the public owes to the dubious tradition unique to the mass media in which they protect each other by hiding each other’s scandals. Perhaps that is why no apologies are ever posted on Nikkei’s website. Though it mercilessly attacks companies that commit crimes or cause accidents, it actively hides competitors’ scandals as if in collusion with them. This perhaps reveals one extreme example of the Japanese media’s closed nature.” This is the sort of editorializing that may not belong in Wiki, but it is funny that someone within Nikkei felt the need to get rid of it. The “we were not alone” passage survived (after being deleted more than once, evidence of some back-and-forth) and the deletion of the anti-Nikkei rant has also survived to this day.
A passage on a 2003 faked photo scandal, in which a Nikkei reporter covering the release of Sony DVD recorder PSX photographed himself for a photo of a random “man buying a PSX” and passed it off as actual reporting (great photo here). The original passage read “criticism mounted by people claiming the incident was a faked stunt” since the reporter’s armband was visible, and continues “Nihon Keizai Shimbun admitted that the man was a Nikkei BP reporter and apologized.” The text in quotes was deleted and replaced with “Nihon Keizai Shimbun admitted that the man was a Nikkei BP reporter and apologized since he was negligent in his duties while reporting.” Interestingly, this shifts the blame from the company as a whole to the one misbehaving reporter.
Comments that writing for Nikkei’s back-page “My Resume” column is “considered the greatest honor for people who have been successful.” This passage was deleted and then re-added and remains.
That’s about it for interesting edits… there are also the usual mundane ones on actors, economy-related stuff, cars, etc. More to come!
This entry was posted
on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 4:19 am and is filed under Curiosities, Econ & Business, Japan, Media, Net culture, Translations.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0
feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:46 am
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/08/20
September 7th, 2007 at 1:59 am
Perhaps I shall write on Mutantfrog travelogue on wiki from my office PC sometime.
so the blog can make a nation wide coverage…...
September 7th, 2007 at 3:03 am
Go for it. I look forward to seeing the debate over whether or not we meet the “notability” standard.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:50 am
Interestingly my brother lives and works in Japan. He’s been there for years and says compared to what he reads about the Blair/Brown regime in the UK he finds it quite open and democratic.
Scary, huh?
I may be back to edit this, of course.
BB