Analysis of the investigative team

Contributing factors found to be complex

The special team charged with investigating the matter has pointed to the following factors:

Defects in the checking system

"WaiWai" was permitted to continue posting inappropriate articles due to the absence of a checking system in three aspects:
- There was no news desk editor functioning in such a way as to check whether articles were appropriate from the viewpoint of media ethics.
- The writers in question were disproportionately male and failed to incorporate a woman's point of view.
- The staff was comprised entirely of foreign writers with no one to contribute a Japanese point of view.

Absence of an editorial quality control system

The main Japanese-language newspaper of the Mainichi Newspapers has various systems in place such as an article review committee and the Open Newspaper Committee to constantly monitor article content. The Mainichi Daily News (MDN) lacked such a system. Articles written by the staff writer were posted without screening. Thus, one reason that inappropriate articles continued to be overlooked was because the system was flawed.

Deficiency in journalistic morals

Although the staff writer was aware that his articles might undermine the credibility of the Mainichi Newspapers, he continued to translate inappropriate articles with frequency, hiding behind the disclaimer: "WaiWai stories are transcriptions of articles that originally appeared in Japanese language publications. The Mainichi Daily News cannot be held responsible for the content of the original articles, nor does it guarantee their accuracy. Views expressed in the WaiWai column are not necessarily those held by the Mainichi Daily News or the Mainichi Newspapers Co." He was clearly straying from the path of journalistic morals.

Insufficient understanding of the English Web site

It must be pointed out that when the Mainichi Daily News switched to online publishing, the Mainichi Newspaper Co., Ltd. as a whole was not sufficiently aware of the importance of relaying information in English to audiences that included readers abroad. There was no clear discussion as to what the editorial policy regarding "WaiWai" should be, and successive supervisors failed in their fundamental job of keeping tabs on the content of the publication for which they were responsible.

Slow response to criticism

At least 15 complaints between April 2001, when the MDN Web site was launched, and March 2008 have been confirmed. However, because "WaiWai" was a popular column, both the staff writer and his supervisors were lacking in a serious response to external criticism.

The investigative team is comprised of members of the City News Division of the Tokyo Head Office, the Open Newspaper Committee Secretariat and the Internal Audit Office. To meet the demands of fairness, the Digital Media Division was excluded from the team.