The Asahi Shimbun admitted Friday that an article it ran in January about an NHK documentary in 2001 contained "uncertain" information but the daily has no plans to correct it.
The newspaper also said it has taken disciplinary measures against senior officials over the leakage to Gekkan Gendai magazine of its reporters' interview records for the article.
The article in question is about NHK, under pressure from two Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers, altering the content of a documentary on a mock war crimes trial to remove scenes where the tribunal found Emperor Hirohito guilty of sanctioning sexual slavery.
Asahi Shimbun Co. President Kotaro Akiyama told a news conference Friday, "We are taking a hard look at points that were covered insufficiently" and the reporting methods used.
The daily said in a statement issued at the news conference that it was not certain if NHK officials were actually "summoned" by powerful LDP lawmakers Shinzo Abe and Shoichi Nakagawa to discuss the mock-trial documentary.
"We could have conveyed the politicians' influence even if we had used 'met' instead of 'summoned,' " in the article, the statement says.
The Asahi article said a meeting between the NHK officials and Nakagawa took place "one day before" the program aired, an encounter that was a key factor in the newspaper's belief that there had been political pressure to censure the program.
But in the statement, Asahi said it would have been "appropriate" to refrain from referring to a specific time frame, without elaborating.
However, Akiyama and the other Asahi executives at the news conference said the degree of uncertainty was not so severe as to force the paper to correct the January article.
Asahi fired editorial division chief Shinichi Yoshida and city news section chief Masahiko Yokoi over the interview records' leak.