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!
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/08/20
Perhaps I shall write on Mutantfrog travelogue on wiki from my office PC sometime.
so the blog can make a nation wide coverage……
Go for it. I look forward to seeing the debate over whether or not we meet the “notability” standard.
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
I thought I’d pop back in to advise that bad as things seem to us here in the West in these days of economic turmoil, I’m hearing that things are far, far more hysterical in – well, shall we say, in the East?
I suspect that this may be because we’ve got used to the ups and downs of what some call capitalism over the many centuries we’ve had the system. Russia, China, places like them, it’s all still very new and of course, they’ve just never seen anything like this. Recessions? Depressions? Pah – these were ailments that only affected the decadent Westerners and running-dog capitalistas. Heh-heh. Not so easy to deal with now it’s happening to them…
BB
Butler : well, that’s only for those fellas livin’ in Russia & china. The rest of south east asia, north east asia (Japan & Korea) & Taiwan are still traumatised by the experience of ’97 – ’98 along with whatever economic bubbles in the ’90s (I guess they’re not particularly affected). Yours truly does not see how the downfall of the US market is gonna benefit anyone in the long run, IMHO. Then again, I’m not an economist or financial whiz.