NHK News May Have Tipped the DPJ Leader Election With Wrong Report on Vote Prospect

wrong, as in "180-degree wrong".



From what I've gathered in twitters and blogs of people who actually watched live both the election proceedings and NHK's reporting on the election (I watched only the election, live on the net), NHK repeatedly reported the totally wrong information about the number of votes that might go to Noda between the first round of voting and the second (final) round of voting.



There were close to 90,000 people watching the netcast of the election, with many of them also watching NHK.



The sequence is something like this:

1. 1st vote ended. The result: Kaieda 143, Noda 102, Maehara 74, Kano 52, Mabuchi 24.

2. 2nd round of voting started. Then about 15 minutes into the voting that took about 30 minutes, NHK reported: "Mr. Mabuchi instructed his supporters this morning to vote for anyone other than Kaieda [if Mabuchi loses in the 1st round]."

3. NHK also said "Kano instructed his supporters to vote for Noda, so did Maehara." NHK was practically predicting the landslide victory of Noda in the 2nd round. They were still voting, and the NHK report was conveyed by the reporters covering the election to the representatives.

4. 2nd round ended. The result: Noda 215, Kaieda 177. Difference was 38 votes.

5. 4PM: Special NHK News - "What we reported earlier about Mr. Mabuchi was wrong. He did not instruct his supporters to vote for anyone other than Kaieda; he told his supporters to do vote FOR Kaieda because Kaieda's policy on tax was close to his (they are both against increasing tax)."

Well, that admission was about 2 hours too late.



Despite the report, Mabuchi supporters are said to have voted for Kaieda after all. But the NHK's erroneous reporting may have swayed enough undecided voters in each faction, as all it took was to sway 16 votes in favor of Noda.



So, NHK may have ended up playing the "kingmaker" in deciding the next prime minister of Japan. Inadvertently or not, I do not know.



I do remember, after the election, PM Kan was all big smiles on the stage with 5 candidates. He must have been so happy to see the candidate backed by Ichiro Ozawa defeated.

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NHK Special: Mapping the Radioactive Fallout

It looks like the NHK Special on the grassroots effort in Japan to map the radioactive fallout after Fukushima has been translated by NHK World into English. Get it while you can, until NHK takes it down..

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#Fukushima I Nuke Accident: Plutonium Found Outside the Plant

Actually, the sample was taken on April 21 but only now the researcher is disclosing it.

So, the US NRC's report in late March that the bits of spent fuel rods were found 1 mile (1.6 kilometer) from the plant was right.

From NHK World (6/5/2011):

Minute amounts of plutonium have been detected for the first time in soil outside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Shinzo Kimura of Hokkaido University collected the roadside samples in Okumamachi, some 1.7 kilometers west of the front gate of the power station. They were taken during filming by NHK on April 21st, one day before the area was designated as an exclusion zone.

Professor Masayoshi Yamamoto and researchers at a Kanazawa University laboratory analyzed the samples and found minute amounts of 3 kinds of plutonium.

The samples of plutonium-239 and 240 make up a total of 0.078 becquerels per kilogram.

This is close to the amount produced by past atomic bomb tests.

But the 3 substances are most likely to have come from the plant blasts, as their density ratio is different from those detected in the past.

Professor Yamamoto said the quantities are so minute that people's health will not be harmed.

But he recommended that the contamination near the plant should be fully investigated, saying that a study may shed light on how radioactive materials spread in the air.

Sunday, June 05, 2011 23:21 +0900 (JST)

This time, I found no egregious mistranslation from NHK World.

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