In his Tokyo Shimbun column about weekly magazines, Hiroyuki Shinoda recently lauded Shukan Asahi for accusing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of exploiting the murder of journalist Kenji Goto by the Islamic State group for political purposes. Shinoda points out that the magazine had been intimidated by the "bashing" its associated newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun, received last summer after the latter retracted a series of stories about the "comfort women." So he was relieved when he saw that Shukan Asahi had recovered the "true essence" of the weeklies' job, which is to make trouble for those in power.