New York Times Reports on June 16 Protests in Japan Against Ooi Nuke Plant Restart, Not a Word About June 15

New York Times, regarded as "newspaper of record", joins the Japanese colleagues in reporting only the June 16 demonstration in front of the Prime Minister's Official Residence in Tokyo. Not a word about the June 15 protest.

To further diffuse the issue, New York Times mentions thousands of protesters "in Tokyo and elsewhere" on Saturday (June 16).

On Friday June 15, 11,000 people gathered in front of the Prime Minister's Official Residence in Tokyo, alone.

The writer, Martin Fackler, is the Tokyo bureau chief of New York Times.

From New York Times (6/16/2012; emphasis is mine):

Japan’s Prime Minister Orders Restart of Two Nuclear Reactors

By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: June 16, 2012

TOKYO — Brushing aside widespread public opposition to avoid feared electric power shortages, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda ordered the reactivation of two nuclear reactors at a plant in western Japan on Saturday, making it the nation’s first plant to go back online since the crisis last year in Fukushima.

The decision to restart the Ohi nuclear plant ends the temporary freeze of Japan’s nuclear power industry, when all 50 of the country’s functional reactors were idled after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Despite the prime minister’s vows to strengthen the Ohi plant against the same sort of huge earthquake and tsunami that knocked out the Fukushima plant in March 2011, the Japanese people have remained deeply divided on the safety of nuclear power.

Even after the prime minister made a rare appeal on June 8 on national television, opinion polls showed that more Japanese opposed restarting the Ohi plant than supported it. Mr. Noda urged the nation to return to nuclear power to avoid electricity shortages that could cause blackouts and cripple industry at a time of rising competition with China and the rest of Asia. Instead, he has supported a slow phasing out of nuclear plants over several decades, as energy alternatives are found.

Saturday’s decision was seen here as a victory for the still-powerful nuclear industry and its backers in the business world, whose political support has been crucial to the otherwise unpopular Mr. Noda. It remains to be seen how the broader public will react to the restart order. Many Japanese already believe that Mr. Noda has rushed to proclaim the Ohi plant safe despite the fact that a new earthquake-resistant control center and other safety measures at the plant are years from completion.

According to polls, two-thirds of Japanese express deep concern about the safety of nuclear plants after last year’s accident, which contaminated food with radiation and shattered the myth of Japan’s infallible nuclear technology. The day before Mr. Noda gave the order, his government was visited by an antinuclear group led by the Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe, which presented what it said were the signatures of 7.5 million people calling for the abolition of nuclear power.

On Saturday, thousands of protesters turned out in the rain in Tokyo and elsewhere with placards criticizing the prime minister’s assertion that the Ohi plant was safe.

(Full article at the link)

Reuters, whose English article on the Ooi restart mentioned 10,000 people protesting on Friday (June 15), is totally quiet about any protest, June 15 or 16, in the Japanese article. The Japanese article is not the translation of the English article, and it was written by different reporters.

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