Jun 10, 2020 (Japan Times) - Japan’s public broadcaster NHK apologized Tuesday for its failed attempt to educate viewers on the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States after its video on anti-racial demonstrations came under fire for lacking context on racial injustice and police brutality that spurred such protests worldwide.
The video in question was introduced in NHK’s Sunday news program “Kore de Wakatta! Sekai no Ima†(“Now I Understand What’s Going On in the Worldâ€), which targets its younger audiences, and was posted on its official Twitter account the same day.
The 80-second long video featured a group of African American protesters led by a muscular African American man wearing a tank top and speaking in a rough and vulgar tone about the gap between the rich and the poor as the main cause of their outrage. The video was accompanied by a hashtag in Japanese that read “anti-racism protests.â€
The release has met with harsh criticism mainly from social media users as tone-deaf and offensive as it failed to mention the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest for allegedly using a counterfeit bill. Many people also complained that the video did not contain any commentary on the problem surrounding racism in the American justice system.
The content was also condemned by the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.
