THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
March 10, 2021 at 16:25 JST
Shunzo Morishita speaks at a news conference as chief of public broadcaster Japan Broadcasting Corp.’s Board of Governors in Tokyo on March 9. (Koichi Ueda)
Shunzo Morishita has been re-elected head of the top-decision making body overseeing Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK), a contentious move that critics say raises concerns about the public broadcaster’s editorial independence.
Members of NHK’s Board of Governors voted unanimously to re-elect Morishita, 75, as chairman at a meeting on March 9.
The 12-member board has final say on approving the broadcaster’s budget, as well as the appointment and dismissal of NHK’s president.
Morishita was re-elected on the grounds that he “smoothly managed” the board’s proceedings, according to a governor who attended the meeting.
At a news conference afterward, Morishita said he is “determined to work hard to help NHK, which is funded by the subscription fee system, continue to play a role as a trusted broadcaster under the Broadcasting Law.”
Morishita previously came under fire from civic groups for what they described as interference in the editorial policies of NHK’s programming through the Board of Governors, which is banned by law.
When the broadcaster reported on post offices selling insurance policies to the elderly and others by deploying illicit methods in the program “Close-UP Gendai Plus” in 2018, Japan Post Holdings Co. lodged complaints to NHK about its news-gathering methods.
Japan Post called on NHK’s Board of Governors to open an investigation into the broadcaster’s governance.
Morishita, acting chairman of the Board of Governors at the time, issued a stern warning to Ryoichi Ueda, then the president of NHK, over how the program was produced.
Since Morishita became the chairman of the Board of Governors in 2019, the board has refused to release minutes of its discussions on the Japan Post question, flouting an in-house rule on information disclosure.
A third-party panel to NHK on information disclosure and protection of personal information has pressed the board twice to fully publish the details of the discussions.
(This article was written by Mayumi Mori and Kenro Kuroda.)
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