The show was broadcast nationwide in Japan during last weekend’s prime time, and is a quiz show investigating whether superstitions and conventional beliefs actually work in real life. The anchorperson introduced six blog websites as examples of information collected via the Internet, which were presented as possible clues to the questions in the show.
TV-Asahi acknowledged the suspicion that the blog sites introduced in the program were fake, and it apologized for the fraud.
TV-Asahi is well-known as the broadcaster that world media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Softbank founder Masayoshi Son attempted to buy a major stake in a dozen years ago. Also, the broadcaster is infamous due to another scandal from two decades ago, in which it used actresses portraying crime victims in interview videos for news programming, a first in the Japanese TV industry’s 50-year history.
Masaru IKEDA