On Jan. 29, the Tokyo High Court found NHK, Japan’s only public broadcasting company, guilty of manipulating a documentary released in 2001 on the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery.The Tribunal itself addressed the Japanese military’s use of “comfort women” during their campaigns in China, where they worked as prostitutes for their soldiers. According to Japan Indymedia, an independent multilingual news source, the suit concerned changes to the documentary that NHK made at the last minute, which were prompted by attacks from right-wing political groups and indirect comments by politicians.

Specifically, NHK severely censored the documentary through deletions, interpolations, alterations, dismemberment and even fabrication of testimonies made by survivors and other speakers at the Tribunal. Narration was altered to implicate that survivors were giving false testimony and hastily added an interview with right-wing extremist Ikuhiko Hata. According to The Harvard Asia Quarterly, Hata disparaged the Tribunal and accused it of being fraught with bias and rife with shortcomings from the standpoint of law.

NHK insisted that the changes were made to make the program more “balanced” and promised to appeal the decision.

“(NHK’s conduct) is unsatisfactory,” said Megumi Fujihara, a student at Kansai Gaidai University. “NHK should report truth and should be fined heavily.”

The Tokyo High Court levied a two-million-yen fine on NHK for infringing on the rights of VAWW-NET (Violence Against Women in War net), an NGO that contributed to the documentary. It was a minor penalty, according to Assistant Professor of Foreign Languages Hiroko Hirakawa.

VAWW-NET considered this ruling in the High Court to be an important victory and a step towards diminishing the power of right-wing political groups. The amount of coverage the issue of “comfort women” received in newspapers prior to the case ruling has increased astronomically. However, the matter of exactly what was censored out was not given much coverage.

“NHK is more concerned with putting on a good show for those in power than with keeping its viewers informed,” said a former NHK employee on VAWW-NET’s Web site.

According to their Web site, NHK is financed directly by viewers. This would, ideally, ensure that the opinions of their viewers are assigned top priority.

Despite this system, NHK remains Japan’s sole public broadcasting network and has been accused of pandering to the government’s interests in the past. Hirakawa said that the press-club system in Japan is partly to blame.

“Many major TV stations and newspapers are part of this press club; freelancer journalists cannot get in. The problem is that government officials and ministries only release information and make statements to members of the press club,” said Hirakawa. “They have very close relationships, almost to the point of being collusive. Then the officials leak information saying, ‘this is off the record,’ and so the press club doesn’t report it for fear of being permanently kicked out.”

This allows the government to control what gets reported, to a certain extent, when corporations like NHK self-censor themselves heavily so as not to offend the interests of the patrons of the press club. As a result, many journalists err on the side of caution and tend to lean conservative in their coverage of hot issues, especially in regards to criticism of the government.