Last week, a judge ruled in favor of NHK in the public broadcaster's libel suit against Kodansha. The publisher's monthly magazine Gendai ran an article in Oct. 2000 that said NHK persuaded fishermen in Indonesia to re-create a method for catching fish involving explosives for a news report. The court found that the magazine's assertion couldn't be proved and awarded NHK 4 million yen.
The kind of manipulation that Kodansha accused NHK of is called yarase, a word that tends to get thrown around a lot these days, and for good reason.
Japanese TV, especially commercial TV, has evolved into what can accurately be called "all reality, all the time." Entertainment programs and news programs overlap so much that it's difficult to tell where one starts and the other ends. But the reason for this overlap has more to do with economics than programming considerations.