The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's energy agency recently contracted with an outside advertising company to monitor "inaccurate" online information regarding nuclear energy. In response, the media cried "censorship," but as pointed out in last week's issue of Aera, the agency has employed the Japan Productivity Center since 2008 to monitor the same sort of reports in newspapers. When the center finds something amiss in a news report, it doesn't call that particular publication and ask for a correction. Instead, according to a representative, it "endeavors to make a situation so that such reports don't happen again."

Not only is this work not censorship, it's not really work. The JPA is yet another semipublic organ (it was set up in the 1950s to study labor relations) whose purposes are vague. What the media views as insidious intent may merely be the age-old practice of bureaucrats justifying their existence.

The charges are particularly sensitive in the midst of the current controversy surrounding the "manipulation of public opinion" by authorities related to nuclear energy. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Administration (NISA) has in the past mobilized employees to attend public symposiums about energy policies to support the pronuclear position.