The tabloid press plays fast and loose with the truth, so anyone who gobbled up last week's NHK story in the weekly Friday should have added a dash of salt. An unnamed employee told Friday that the prime minister's office demanded the public broadcaster apologize for questions asked in its interview with Liberal Democratic Party Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga on the nightly in-depth news show "Closeup Gendai." Friday said the incident reinforces the view that under its new chairman, Katsuto Momii, NHK is beholden to the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, since the prime minister's office got its apology as well as a pledge to root out the person responsible for the faux pas.
The anonymous source said the "atmosphere was tense" when Suga showed up for the July 3 interview, which would be broadcast live. "Closeup Gendai" provided an outline of the questions beforehand, which is normal. What was not normal, according to the source, was Momii showing up to personally greet the guest and a top NHK executive monitoring the show from a control room.
The interview was conducted by the show's regular host, Hiroko Kuniya, who has a reputation for bluntness. Compared with other NHK on-air talent she is definitely more probing, but compared with interviewers at, say, the BBC, with which NHK likes to compare itself, she's tame. Two topics were discussed: The meetings between Japan and North Korea regarding Japanese abductees, and the Cabinet's decision to allow Japan's Self-Defense Forces to participate in collective self-defense activities overseas.