Joi Ito's Web

The weeklies in Japan are writing about a scandal at the Nikkei, one of the largest Japanese newspapers. They report that a whistle blower inside of the Nikkei sent email to the management at Nikkei about the 10's of millions of dollars worth of fake checks that were issued by a Nikkei subsidiary. The whistle blower apparently claims that the president of the Nikkei was involved and these funds were used to create dirty money. According to the weeklies, the president is being bumped up to chairman, which is a Japanese way of removing him from operations. It's the talk of the town. The weeklies are notoriously slanderous and the Nikkei is apparently threatening to sue. This is an interesting incident worth following because a scandal by the head of one of the biggest newspapers is going to be difficult for the mass media to report. Currently none of the major newspapers have reported this incident.