Itoh killing reveals blogger breakdown

ONCE UPON A TIME, not so long ago, weblogs were hailed as the most important tool yet developed for citizen democracy. After a few heady successes, however–such as claiming the head of American newscaster Dan Rather—concerns are growing that the proliferation of blogs and the concomitant (and inevitable) degradation of content has reached a point where in some instances they might cause more harm than good.

Oliver Kamm, a London-based author, columnist, and founder of an asset management firm, writes here that blogs are “A Parody of Democracy”:

(Blogging) is a democratic medium, allowing anyone to participate in political debate without an intermediary, at little or no cost. But it is a direct and not deliberative form of democracy. You need no competence to join in.

And

The blogosphere…is a reliable vehicle for the coagulation of opinion and the poisoning of debate. It is a fact of civic life that is changing how politics is conducted – overwhelmingly for the worse, and with no one accountable for the decline.

Reasonable people might disagree, and Kamm provides links to the opinions of three people with contrary views (all of whom he recommends elsewhere on his website). Yet there is no denying that some bloggers focusing on Japan and East Asia unwittingly proved his point with their initial response to the recent murder of Nagasaki City Mayor Itcho Itoh.

Itoh was shot and killed on April 17 while campaigning for election to a fourth term in office by Tetsuya Shiro’o, a gangster with ties to Japan’s Yamaguchi crime syndicate. Without waiting for the facts to emerge, some bloggers immediately started drawing parallels with the 1990 shooting of former Nagasaki Mayor Hitoshi Motoshima, who was targeted for saying publicly that Japan’s emperor bore some responsibility for World War II.

Some bloggers just couldn’t wait to get on line to parade their pseudo-insights. One gangster shot one Nagasaki mayor in 1990 because of the mayor’s views of the Emperor’s wartime responsibility? So when another gangster shoots another Nagasaki mayor 17 years later, of course the Internet pundits put two and two together and breathlessly inform the world the answer is four. Haven’t you been reading in the papers about Japan’s recent resurgence of right-wing nationalism? Don’t you know they’re all unapologetically seething under the surface and itching to march right back into Asia? Besides, it’s Japan, so the worst of motives can always be presumed.

Except that two plus two is kindergarten arithmetic, and this was a different equation entirely. It turns out that Shiro’o resembles not John Wilkes Booth so much as Charles Guiteau. But more to the point, Japan’s mainstream media were broadcasting accurate reports on the killer’s identity and motive less than one hour after the shooting. That’s when I happened to turn on the television; as I was hearing for the first time that the mayor had been shot, I also was hearing that the man who pulled the trigger had a long-running dispute with the mayor and City Hall over compensation for damage to his automobile caused when he ran into a pothole near some road construction work.

Despite this rapid reporting, and notwithstanding the fact that Itoh’s pet issue was nuclear weapons and not the Emperor, and that the mayor had actually received the support of those LDP nationalists, some bloggers continued to carry a torch for the political/wartime angle. And, as Kamm foresaw, opinion immediately began coagulating in the comments section of the blogs.

When apprised of this information, one blogger—not even in Japan—insisted he was just “fishing for information” and defended himself by saying the investigation was still in progress.

Well, the police have made considerable progress with their investigation since that night, and it looks like some bloggers are going home with empty fishing poles.

This week, Nagasaki Prefecture police investigators revealed that the initial reports have been correct all along. The confessed killer Shiro’o had repeatedly complained about the city’s response to the damage his car suffered when it ran into a pothole during road construction in February 2003, and that the company run by one of his two accomplices was prevented from using a municipal financing scheme. When Shiro’o heard Itoh announce that he would seek reelection, and that the media tabbed him as the favorite in the race, he said his “hatred for the mayor increased.” He told investigators that he “could not bear to see Itoh reelected”, because the mayor would continue to ignore him.

With the formal start of the electoral campaign on April 15, Shiro’o sent a letter to a television station expressing these same sentiments. One accomplice wrote the letter, and the other looked up the address of the station. They staked out the mayor’s campaign office on the 15th and 16th. On the 17th, the day of the shooting, Shiro’o waited outside the Mayor’s campaign office with one accomplice serving as a lookout and the other as the driver of a getaway car. He told police he decided to pull the trigger that day because he assumed his letter had arrived at the TV station.

Yet, have any of the bloggers who speculated on a possible political motive followed up on the story and publicly admitted that their speculation (if that’s what you call gossip mongering) was unwarranted? Or have they just moseyed along to go fishing at some other hole?

While they’re daydreaming on the riverbank as they wait for a nibble, perhaps they ought to consider the following: that idle conjecture is not insight, but rather superficial entertainment; that to offer analysis, you have to know what you’re talking about first; and that, as Edward R. Murrow pointed out, just because your voice reaches to the other side of the world doesn’t make you any wiser than when it only reached to the end of the bar.

Otherwise, what you’re peddling doesn’t even remotely resemble citizen democracy.

It’s just a digital schoolgirl diary for Internet idlers.