Withdraw 'personal information' bill: JCP and mass media

Newspapers, publishers, and broadcasting companies are now united in opposition to the government's new bill on "personal information protection" which the diet has begun discussing.

At the House of Representative Plenary Session on April 25, the Japanese Communist Party's Yoshii Hidekatsu warned that the bill will threaten the freedom of expression and the press by applying excessive control over news media under the pretext of protecting personal information.

Press coverage of suspicions concerning politicians, among others, will be seriously limited if politicians whom the press report as involved in scandals demand disclosure of the news source, alleging that personal information be protected under the law, Yoshii said.

If ministers are respectively assigned to deal with personal information protection in relation to every media category, it will possibly cause intervention in the press and publication by the authority, stated the JCP lawmaker.

In light of the urgent need to protect individual information, Yoshii emphasized, the bill is badly defective in that it has no definition on privacy.

Expressing resolute opposition to the government bill, the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association (154 members) issued a statement on April 24, and the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan (203 members), the Japan Book Publishers Association (492 members), and the Japan Magazine Publishers' Association (93 members) issued protests on April 25.

Also on April 25 in Tokyo, eight writers and journalists, including Shiroyama Saburo, Inoue Hisashi, and Yoshioka Shinobu, issued a joint appeal calling for the urgent need to get the bill withdrawn. (end)