Hideya Sugio (68), former TBS anchor and member of the House of Councilors of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, updated his X (formerly Twitter) on March 30. He re-posted his criticism of Sugio’s assertion against Norimi Onoda, 42, Minister of State for Economic Affairs and Security, who protested against the “nuisance” of a weekly magazine’s interview of him in the vicinity. In a post on March 26, Onoda said, “People in my hometown and my classmates have been interviewed by the Weekly Shincho. I don’t know where they are leaking my personal information, but I’m scared, I feel sick,” he said, revealing that he has received SOS from his own neighborhood. Some of them said that if they did not agree to be interviewed, they were asked to give reasons why they were refusing the interview, and some of them felt as if they were being hounded. Sugio quoted from an article discussing the case, “I don’t know what kind of interviewing behavior it was. However, unless it was something that deviated from common sense, it would be an exaggeration to assume that the media coverage was a ‘nuisance,'” he questioned, adding, “It is normal for those on the side of power in particular to be checked. I feel a strong sense of discomfort with this post,” he continued. This post was met with some opposition, as Sugio is a former member of the media. In response, Mr. Sugio asserted, “I will post again, but I have heard from the people concerned that the coverage by the weekly magazine pointed out was within the scope of normal journalistic activities. Of course, it is not good to force those who refuse to be interviewed to do so, but otherwise, if a current minister writes something like this on the Internet, it will have an atrophying effect on those who are interviewing him, or even make it impossible to conduct normal interviewing. I would like people to know that this will ultimately lead to a restriction of the public’s right to know,” he asserted.
