Television Tokyo Channel 12 Ltd. announced Thursday in-house punitive steps over revelations that it paid a man who informed them of a planned robbery, which the broadcaster taped and later aired.
TV Tokyo President Sadahiko Sugaya, who will take a 25 percent pay cut for two months, acknowledged that those involved used "reporting procedures that were wrong in view of journalistic ethics." The reporter on the piece was removed from his post.
It was discovered in early July that the reporter and an editor agreed to pay cash to an informant who told them of a planned burglary at a construction materials company in Edogawa Ward in late May. A TV crew filmed the incident from the break-in to the subsequent arrest of some of the perpetrators, and the footage was aired.
An internal panel set up to look into the case later found that the the informant received a total of 391,000 yen in cash, gifts and paid meals, and that TV Tokyo submitted photographs to police of three members of the burglary ring that the crew had taken during the course of their reporting.