UNITED NATIONS, February 18 – Japan and some of its media express concern that China is eclipsing them, even as they eschew investigation for fluff like Hideki Matsui eating steak standing up. Now they bemoan that China's foreign minister has visited more countries - 262 they say, which don't exist - than Toro Kono, now promoting himself as a possible prime minister. But they didn't follow up on Taro Kono's evasive answer to Inner City Press about returning to UN peacekeeping after failure in South Sudan, for example.
As the North Korea UN sanctions "experts" report continues to be cherry picked further and further down the food chain, now that North Korea paid its 2017 UN dues by means of a swap is also ignored, in favor of fluff pieces about former Yankee Hideki Matsui eating small steaks on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. Meanwhile in the wake of admitted misreporting on Okinawa, accountability means cutting of one month's salary from the Naha bureau chief. But are such cuts overseas, amid "coverage" of cuts of beef, not likely to cause more errors? Like the recent report focused on coal, pointing the finger at Vietnam, Russia, China, Vietnam and South Korea. Omitted, apparently intentionally, are violations by Japanese companies, like Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, as Inner City Press has reported. It is facts chucked or thrown, rather than fact checked. The reporting is politicized, or as identified in Tokyo, "last week the Sankei Shimbun retracted an article it published in December about a U.S. Marine who was injured in a car accident, saying it could not confirm that the marine had been trying to save a Japanese citizen when he was hit by the car. In an article published on Feb. 8, the Sankei Shimbun explained it had received a comment from the U.S. Marine Corps in Okinawa about the accident, but had failed to confirm with the Okinawa Prefectural Police whether the marine really saved the man. According to Duke Reporters’ Lab, a project by Duke University that maintains a database of fact-checking organizations across the globe, there was only one fact-checking website in Japan as of Friday. The site, called GoHoo, is headed by Hitofumi Yanai, a lawyer and co-founder of FIJ. There were 44 such websites and organizations in the U.S., five in South Korea and one in China." By this count, Japan is the same as China. And how much fact checking is done at the UN, on reporting about the UN? We'll have more on this. On the now exposed reporting about a car crash in Okinawa back in December 2017, complete with similar finger pointing at the Ryukyu Shimpo and Okinawa Times. On that one Masato Inui, an executive officer at Sankei Shimbun, has made promises. And on the other?
