Japan: Bloggers on TV-Asahi and “Uso Basutaa”

Heated has been the reaction of many Japanese bloggers over the last week who felt cheated by TV Asahi after it turned out that in the variety show ウソバスター! (Uso Basutaa!, lit. lie buster), broadcast prime time on the 10th of January, the blogs quoted as sources had been created for the show by staff. If the show's production company Nonpro [jp] and TV Asahi staff thought that nobody would actually go out and search for the six websites introduced by the presenter, they were wrong.

As has happened many times in the past, in fact, clever television viewers and 2-channelers (users of Japan's most well-known bulletin board) were ready again this time to search for the titles of the posts mentioned and verify their truthfulness, whereby they discovered that all six blogs had only one entry each in their archives and that all entries had been written on the same day, the 10th of December. The suspicion that the quiz was entirely based on lies, despite the fact that the aim of the show was to figure out whether some common beliefs and“metropolitan legends”are true or not, then spread on the internet and brought many bloggers to investigate further.

This is a part of the thread titled テレビ朝日「情報整理バラエティー ウソバスター!」で仕込みブログ発覚 ( Found the blog created for the news variety show “Uso Buster!”) started at 2ch soon after the show.

9 : すずめちゃん(アラバマ州):2009/01/10(土) 21:22:26.78 ID:CNLgnzQj
ウソバスターをウソバスター

Let's bust the lie of the “Lie Buster”

10 : すずめちゃん(愛知県):2009/01/10(土) 21:22:27.06 ID:pafBA5vW
見た見た
やっぱりやらかしてたか

I saw it, and they made it up.

22 : すずめちゃん(埼玉県):2009/01/10(土) 21:23:20.49 ID:pW9ec1Vl
まとめ直しておいた
NEWSの意味
セメダインの意味
サケとシャケの違い
つまようじのギザギザ
干支のイノシシ
地下鉄のカーブ

24 : すずめちゃん(東京都):2009/01/10(土) 21:23:27.72 ID:u2dJMdca
こりゃ、もう、番組ごと、バスターだな。

The show itself has been busted.

29 : すずめちゃん(大阪府):2009/01/10(土) 21:23:44.93 ID:lNNyRTfx
あるある大辞典はこれで番組打ち切りだったんだぜ

Oh, [the show] “Aru Aru Daijiten” was canceled for that kind of thing.

44 : すずめちゃん(大阪府):2009/01/10(土) 21:25:07.80 ID:wMO8DpD3
さも「偶然にもネットで発見した面白い情報」みたいな構成だったけど
発見されたブログ見ると、どう見ても関係者が作ってるだろ。
そもそも何で無理にネットを絡めたのか

They introduced the show as based on“interesting information found by chance on the Internet”,
but if you look at the blogs they found, they're obviously written by the staff.
By the way, why do they even have to drag the Internet into it?

73 : すずめちゃん(アラバマ州):2009/01/10(土) 21:26:53.28 ID:rmgGtpK/
見てたけど、個人ブログから拾ってきたってのが仕込みくせーと思ったら
やっぱり仕込だったかw
こういうTV的なやり方ってもうダメだっていつになったら学習するんだろう
TV業界の人たちは

I watched the show, and the idea that these were just things picked up from personal blogs came off as made up.
And in fact there was a trick.
When will the TV industry learn that this way of doing things just won't work?

83 : すずめちゃん(関西・北陸):2009/01/10(土) 21:27:28.99 ID:Hroa3r74
どうにかしてネットを悪にしたいんだな

They just want to make the internet the bad guy.

89 : すずめちゃん(兵庫県):2009/01/10(土) 21:27:53.31 ID:hgJrT0Hc
>>1
画像とか見れないからわけわからんのだが
どういう仕込みか文で説明してくれ

I haven't seen the show so I have no idea what this is about,
but could you please explain what kind of scam this was?

121 : すずめちゃん(dion軍):2009/01/10(土) 21:29:33.54 ID:Oo6s5E4b
>>89
ネットに蔓延するウソ情報を紹介する番組

ウソ情報が書かれたブログ発見!やっぱりネットは信用できませんね

紹介されたブログの記事は殆どが12/10の1件のみ
他に記事があっても全部12/10付の記事のみ

実はそのブログ自体をテレ朝が作っていたヤラセ?

It's a show to showcase lies that are spreading on internet

And they found blogs with lies in it! [Result:] as expected, we can't rely on internet…

But, in the blogs quoted there is only one entry, dated 12/10
Even when more than one entry is displayed, the date is always the same

So these are just a bunch of fake blogs created by TV-Asahi, right?

178 : すずめちゃん(滋賀県):2009/01/10(土) 21:32:16.99 ID:vZmjan1i
なんで事前に仕込んだブログって分かるの?

How do you know those blogs were made up beforehand?

211 : すずめちゃん(愛媛県):2009/01/10(土) 21:33:40.70 ID:Vrw3IIo8
>>178
仕込みブログの理由

1 全部同じ日に投稿していた
2 記事が1つしかない 見える

The reasons why we can see that they were made up:

1 The articles are all posted on the same day.
2 All the blogs have only one article posted.

One 2channeler also found out that the production company Nonpro had been already involved in a show suspended because it was accused of news falsification. The same company, a few days after the accident, was the subject of an article that appeared on J-Cast, where the author presented claims about the low salary and bad conditions of the offices that Nonpro employees have blabbed about directly at the company's website.

71 :へたれの極み ◆oJlmXYegxg :2009/01/10(土) 21:26:44.07 ID:hLt1ZXdb
http://www.nonpro.co.jp/index.html
http://www.nonpro.co.jp/works.html
製作会社

The production company is Nonpro.

200 : すずめちゃん(dion軍):2009/01/10(土) 21:33:08.87 ID:VkACREno
>>71
>過去の制作番組

>■関西テレビ
>まかせて!エキスパ
>発掘!あるある大事典
>発掘!あるある大事典2

>>to 71:
>From the [company's] history
>Kansai Terebi
>Hakkutsu! Aru aru Daijiten
>Hakkutsu! Aru aru Daijiten 2

245 : すずめちゃん(関西地方):2009/01/10(土) 21:35:13.53 ID:7ahNT5Ae
>>200
なんか納得したw

Now I'm convinced

264 : すずめちゃん(東京都):2009/01/10(土) 21:35:51.64 ID:RSih8erD
>>200
こんなんで笑うとは・・・

This is nothing to laugh about…

240 : すずめちゃん(東京都):2009/01/10(土) 21:34:53.86 ID:/aJJs8ZB
インターネットは嘘だらけですよ
テレビは真実を伝えますって言いたいんだなw

Their goal is to make people think that the Internet is just a mountain of lies while TV tells them the truth.

Ogiue Chiki (荻上チキ), a TV show and media critic, considers what happened not to be surprising given that many in Japan are used to check online the news learnt on TV.

僕も含め、テレビを観ながら、気になったことをすぐググる人は少なくない。テレビが持つアテンション力は、まだまだ強力だ (というよりむしろ、最近のお笑い番組や予告編の作り方の文法などを見ると、アテンションを獲得しようとする動きはむしろ高まっているようにさえ思え る)。そんな現在、テレビによって多くの注目を集めた結果、こうした情報行動を誘発することが起こるというわけだ。

There are more than a few people, myself included, who immediately search on Google what they find interesting when watching TV. The capacity that TV has to catch people's attention is still strong (and actually, examining the structure of the comedy shows or the previews of coming attractions recently, I would say that they are made in that way deliberately in order to catch the audience's attention).
That's why, it's the fact that TV has attracted so much attention [to this issue] that has induced people to take these actions about information.

Of course, as every company which has been caught red-handed in Japan does, TV Asahi publicly apologized but many televiewers found those apologies, published on the show's website [ja], not enough to save TV Asahi’s reputation.

One of them, Soratyan424, expresses her disappointment in this post:

同社広報部では、「実際のブログ作成者から撮影許可が取れなかったので、同じ情報を元にスタッフが『再現』した。そのことをテロップやナレーションで伝えるべきだった。視聴者に誤解を与えかねない表現となり、申し訳ない」としている。
後からこういうこと発言しても説得力ないですよね・・・・
こういうこと誰も問題視せず普通に放送してしまうという時点で
テレビ局のモラルというか姿勢がどういうものなのかが垣間見れる気がします

TV-Asahi’s press office says that, “As we couldn’t get permission from real blog writers to broadcast their blogs, based on the same information the staff “reproduced” those blogs. We apologize because we should have communicated it by telop or narration. We understand that for the televiewers it might have given rise to misunderstandings, and we beg their pardon”.
It’s quite impossible to be moved by these words when they pronounce them only after the fact…
I have the feeling that it is on occasions where this kind of thing is broadcast, without being considered any kind of problem, that you catch a glimpse of TV's morals and attitude.

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