Nippon Television Network Corp. aired a special program at 12:50 a.m., Aug. 24, to examine a grave error in its Nov. 23, 2008, program of "Shinso Hodo Bankisha." The Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization, a body made up of NHK and private broadcasting companies, had called on NTV to broadcast the special program.
"Bankisha" had aired a statement from a former construction company executive alleging that the Gifu prefectural government maintained a slush fund and that he had sent ¥2 million to a prefectural government worker. But a prefectural government probe did not turn up any irregularities. The former executive then admitted in a program aired March 1, 2009, that he had made a false statement. He was found guilty on July 23 of obstructing the prefectural government's business because of his statement.
In the special program, a director said he had felt uneasy about the reliability of the man's statement. The date of the "Bankisha" broadcast had been set in advance, with only three days available for research and information gathering. The broadcast team had looked for people via the Internet to provide usable information. Although team members knew that the address of the holder of the bank account to which the man said he had sent money was in fact the address of the same man, it did not delve into the suspicions raised. Moreover, NTV had commissioned the production of "Bankisha" to a subcontractor. Most of the staffers who did the research and gathered information were from the subcontractor and their experience was uneven.