One would have thought the media learned something from the Kim Hye Gyong debacle.
As explained in this space two weeks ago, the interview with the North Korean daughter of Japanese abductee Megumi Yokota earned Fuji TV, Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun universal condemnation for the way they handled it. But on Nov. 15, the magazine Shukan Kinyobi published an exclusive interview with the husband and daughters of returned abductee Hitomi Soga that attracted even more rotten eggs.
Most of the criticism has been the same: The magazine allowed itself to be exploited by North Korean propagandists and needlessly upset people involved, in this case Soga herself. Even Tetsuya Chikushi, one of Kinyobi's founding editors, complained about the interview during his nightly editorial spot on TBS "News 23."