Mainichi clueless about internet – runs article blaming Wikipedia user for murders
Thanks to Helical for reporting this development in the comment section of today’s post about the murders targeting Health Ministry bureaucrats:
Hot on the heels of the actual murder, Mainichi has committed a colossal flop regarding this case.
They ran an article in the morning edition, claiming that the attacks were declared beforehand on Wikipedia, speculating that it was yet another case of netizens announcing crimes on the Net.
Their reason was that the name of the assassinated minister was annotated as being assassinated on the wikipedia, and the timestamp was apparently before the actual crime. They even claimed police were investigating connections.Except there’s one catch.
The Wikipedia article edit timestamp was in GMT, not JST (GMT +9:00).
The edit was about 3 hours after the crime, but Mainichi assumed it was 6 hours *before* the stabbing, and jumped the gun.
As soon as it was published on the web, 2-channelers caught on to the flub and the big lulz started, and Mainichi pulled the web article but couldn’t stop the presses, and this wound up on the morning edition.
Mainichi’s Osaka edition even included the name of the Wikipedia editor, Popons, in their headline:
And morning TV shows failed to check the facts before reporting the printed Mainichi articles as truth:
Mainichi has since placed a short apology on their website, and an evening edition of the print edition contained an article that made a correction while apparently placing some of the blame on the Wikipedia editor. While Popons may have used the term “assassination” and accidentally written that a bureaucrat was killed when it was in fact his wife who was attacked, that’s no excuse for Mainichi to confuse time zones and run a sensational piece about Wikipedia editors supposedly killing people.
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I like the tiny ? at the end of the headline! That’s like the evening sports papers with their enormous half-page two kanji headline and a tiny か hidden somewhere inside the second kanji.
I wonder if Popons can sue the Mainichi for something? Sounds like the Mainichi was too keen to get back at the interwebs after the WaiWai fiasco.
Yeah, I think that this will just make 2chers and others more anti-Mainichi. Many were already anti-Mainichi before the WaiWai thing and the way Mainichi handled that did not help at all. Now that they’ve doinked up again with this, I’m sure that there will be more backlash against Mainichi.
LOL. That Popons guy must have had some fright
You kidding? I would LOVE to be “Popons” right now, with my wiki name all over the place. I would want a copy of that article! Frame it, and hang it on my wall. lol
Probably the strangest part of this story is that Popons doesn’t have his own Wikipedia entry yet.
Gah, my horrible writing is a full post!
I’d like to thank James for cleaning up the little mistakes, but I would have written it a bit more carefully if I knew it was going to be featured as a Japan Probe article
A couple of things: 1) WTF is the Mainichi doing reporting stuff in Wikipedia as fact?
2) I’m surprised you’ve giving Popons the benefit of the doubt when this person got the entire story factually wrong (that’s more egg on the Mainichi’s face). Have you considered that Popons may be an idiot or have some kind of beef with the government?
3) That the morning TV shows didn’t check the facts is a given. They are not hard news programs. All of them have a newspaper corner where they review the morning headlines, but that’s the extent of the corner. None of the presenters are reporters or smart enough to fact check newspapers before airing the front pages.