Atenet of journalism in some quarters is that three examples make a credible story. The Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading left-of-centre newspaper, with a circulation of 7.3m, is battling for its reputation after a third embarrassing retraction. On September 14th it admitted that it had faked an interview with the boss of Nintendo, a video-game company. In August and September it withdrew two, more consequential, articles. The first had to do with the army's wartime use of "comfort women", ie, women forced into prostitution. The second had to do with the catastrophe at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in 2011. The fear is that the Asahi, the most forceful of Japan's establishment-minded big dailies, will in future pull its punches.
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