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SCMP’s Asia desk

Japan’s Nippon Television has apologised for manipulating street interview clips to falsely claim that Chinese people eat crows and held a freelance producer accountable.
Hiroyuki Fukuda, the television network’s president, apologised on Monday and announced that street interviews for the variety show involved would be suspended, days after the company confirmed the interviewee’s responses had been manipulated, Japanese media reported.
“This was due to intentional editing, with the desire to make it as entertaining as possible,” he said at a press conference as quoted by public broadcaster NHK.
“Everything about it was inappropriate.”
Everything about it was inappropriate
Hiroyuki Fukuda, Nippon Television president
The TV network said a freelance producer had cherry-picked quotes from a Chinese interviewee to deliver an entertaining effect, The Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported.
In the March 24 episode of the network’s variety programme Late Monday Show, a woman from China was featured as saying there were few crows in the country “because everyone eats them”, suggesting the bird was a common dish.
“Just stew and eat them. That’s it,” she was shown as saying.

The show’s director had instructed the production team to fact-check the remarks, and a staff member was said to confirm from a government website and other sources that eating crows was a custom in some parts of China, Nippon TV said.
A caption reading “the custom is not practised throughout the entire country” was then added to the show.
The episode stirred a whirlwind of controversy on Chinese social media, as internet users accused the interviewee of misrepresenting Chinese people.
In a widely circulated screenshot of the woman’s post responding to comments, she clarified that she was misquoted.
“They asked what I usually ate for dinner,” she said, adding that her answer, “stew and eat them”, was referring to hot pots.
“I said we eat pigeons so there were few pigeons on the street. But it was maliciously edited,” she added.
Pigeons are considered a delicacy in Chinese cuisine, but not crows.

In response, Nippon TV published an announcement on its website on Thursday in both Japanese and Chinese languages, confirming that her quotes had been distorted.
“The production team had maliciously edited her responses to other questions and totally distorted her ideas,” the announcement said.
“This is an unforgivable mistake for a television broadcaster.”
Despite the TV network having said the production team had no intention of discriminating against the Chinese, an academic said the show was doing exactly that.
“It causes discrimination. It should not be permitted, regardless of genre,” Takahiko Kageyama, a media studies professor at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts in Kyoto, told The Asahi Shimbun.
He was also concerned that the incident would undermine the public’s trust in street interviews. Already, growing privacy concerns were making finding interviewees more difficult than ever, he added.


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A freelance producer had manipulated the clip for maximum entertainment value, network claimed


A freelance producer had manipulated the clip for maximum entertainment value, network claimed.


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