Why am I reporting on the “Freedom of the Press Trial” as part of my series, “Adults in the Student Suicide Case?”

Prioritizing self-preservation within an organization will perpetuate the structure that creates victims. I wanted to shed light on that.

Let me recap what happened.

In 2017, Hayato Fukuura, a junior at Kaisei High School in Nagasaki Prefecture, committed suicide due to bullying. Kaisei High School tried to cover it up, and the prefecture approved of it. The Nagasaki Shimbun defended the prefecture. Kaisei High School still denies that bullying was the cause of Hayato’s suicide.

Journalists need to cut into this self-defense structure. Yoichi Ishikawa, a reporter of Kyodo News, criticized the Nagasaki Shimbun in his book “The Sanctuary of Bullying,” published by Bungeishunju.

However, Kyodo News is now also attempting to defend itself. It prioritized the interests of its member company, the Nagasaki Shimbun, and informed Ishikawa that reprinting his book would be prohibited. He has been removed from his post as a reporter. In order to safeguard “freedom of the press,” Ishikawa sued Kyodo News in July 2023.

It has been more than a year since the lawsuit was filed. In the seven oral arguments to date, Kyodo News has been unable to properly prove Ishikawa’s wrongdoing. In the sixth oral argument, Kyodo News dropped its claim that the book “defamed the Nagasaki Shimbun.”

Then, in a desperate attempt, Kyodo News specifically claimed that Ishikawa’s “qualifications as a reporter” were flawed during the eighth oral argument on November 1.

However, Kyodo News’ claims lacked credibility.

“There was a lack of cooperativeness”

After being fired from his job as a reporter, Ishikawa was ordered to transfer to the “Editorial Research Department” at the Tokyo headquarters, where he spent seven hours every day scanning and digitizing articles from 1968 to 1988.

According to Kyodo News, the transfer was ordered because it would be “a risk to organizational management to assign him to a department where he can freely conduct investigation activities at his own discretion.”

Why, then, was it deemed a risk? During that day’s oral argument, an argument was presented for the first time.

They claim that there was a problem with awareness and cooperativeness as a Kyodo News reporter.

In addition to the reporting duties that the defendant reporter was instructed by his superiors as a news agency employee, the company allowed him to choose his own subject and conduct investigation during working hours. However, as described below, while working at the Chiba branch office, the plaintiff refused to engage in routine reporting activities such as interviewing the police officers as a person in charge of the prefectural police, and neglected to communicate with other branch office staff to the bare minimum, such as sharing his location and contact information, as well as having issues with his awareness as a reporter and cooperation with other reporters.

Kyodo News listed specific examples in its preliminary documents.

・After he was assigned to the Chiba branch, he was in charge of the prefectural police. However, he rarely made rounds inside the prefectural police headquarter, or interviewed the police officers at night or in the morning. His superior and his juniors continued to cover the case instead.

 

・He doesn’t answer his cell phone and is slow to respond to messages. We didn’t know where he was or what he was doing, and it was difficult to give him instructions. So a few months later, we assigned him to the Judicial Press Club, which required little outside reporting.

 

・Although he was assigned to cover the court, he did not follow up on reports from other newspapers; instead, a reporter covering the prefectural police did so.

 

・When he was in charge of city administration, he only attended the mayor’s press conferences when instructed by a reporter in charge of prefectural administration. We didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.

 

・The number of articles published (average 5 articles per month) was less than half that of other reporters (average 10-13 articles per month).

 

・When a senior reporter asked Ishikawa, “What do you want to do in Chiba?”, he answered, “I don’t want to cover the administration or the prefectural police. I want to cover the atomic bombing and its victims. Chiba is not interesting. I want to go back to Nagasaki.” He lacked the awareness to fulfill his role at the Chiba branch office.

 

・Even if a call came in at the branch office, if there was someone else there, he did not answer the call. Sometimes the branch manager would answer instead.

 

 ・When a part-time employee handed a fax that had arrived at the branch office to Ishikawa, it was ignored.

 

・There was a lack of cooperativeness.

The rating is “standard”

However, these criticisms about Ishikawa’s work attitude are at odds with Kyodo News’ previous assessment of him.

Kyodo News conducts personnel evaluations every six months. Before being transferred to the research department, Ishikawa was a member of the Chiba branch, where he received an “A” rating, the fourth out of seven. This is a standard rating, and Kyodo News rules state that it is also subject to promotion review.

There is some question as to whether a fourth-highest rating is appropriate for Ishikawa, who has won several journalism-related awards for his books. However, it is certainly not an evaluation that would remove him from his job as a reporter.

Is Kyodo News lying in court?

I wanted to interview with Kyodo News, so after the court session ended I spoke to people from the headquarters who had come to observe the hearing: Shuhei Masunaga, head of the Legal and Intellectual Property Office, and Kazuhiro Yamauchi, head of the Legal Department, who were in charge of Ishikawa’s questioning.

When I called out to Director Yamauchi, “I’m Nakagawa, a reporter of Tansa,” he started to walk away without saying a word. When I handed him my business card and said, “I would like to talk to you,” he pointed to Director Masunaga behind him and repeated, “He is in charge.”

Tansa Editor-in-Chief Makoto Watanabe was also present that day and asked Masunaga for an interview. Masunaga replied that the General Affairs Bureau was the contact point for interviews.

We have already interviewed Ishikawa. We will verify Kyodo News’ claims in court using the results of a follow-up investigation with Kyodo News.

To be continued.

(Originally published in Japanese on November 1, 2024. Translation by Mana Shibata.)

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