That wasn’t all. Kidnappings were different to other cases. Mikami knew, having read up on the documentation concerning national press policy since his appointment as press director, how dangerous they could be.
Kidnappings brought with them the extremely delicate issue of the Press Coverage Agreement. The agreement had first come into being as an apology for a history of unregulated and irresponsible reporting of kidnappings. There is no way for the police to protect a victim once a kidnapper who has warned his target not to call the police learns, either from the papers or the TV, that the police have become involved. Because of this the press are required to sign an agreement whenever a kidnapping takes place, stating that they will refrain from reporting anything about the case until either the kidnapper’s arrest or the safe return of the victim. It falls to the police to bridge the resultant vacuum of information. They are obligated to offer updates and real-time reports on the progress of the investigation. This is where the difficulty begins.
In reality, the Press Coverage Agreement is a slip of paper signed by various agencies of the press, but not between the media and the police. Despite this, the police take a leading role in the administrative task of setting it up; this is because they are usually the first to learn about a kidnapping, and also first to make a judgement whether the victim’s life is at risk. They present the general details of the case to the members of the Press Club, then request them to sign a coverage agreement. In most cases, the press accept the terms, giving the agreement the impression, from the outside, of having been made between the police and the press.
The end result is the press signing the document, while entering into a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with the police.
On the surface, this resembles a promise made with the goal of protecting innocent life, but the reality is that it’s more like a negotiated contract. On the one hand, the police want the press to agree; if this happens, they can focus on the investigation without having to keep an eye on reporters’ movements. On the other hand, the press find themselves having to put aside their freedoms and the public’s right to know, but they are able at the same time to gain leverage from this to argue for greater checks and balances; also, being the side having made a concession, they are in a strong position to pressure the police into full and complete disclosure of all case information. Considered objectively, the contract means the press can sit back and watch as a vast amount of case-specific intelligence – more than they could obtain by themselves – comes tumbling into their hands. But nobody sees it this way. Each time a kidnapping occurs, one to two hundred reporters and cameramen push their way into the police station dealing with the case. While they might turn up in high spirits, the inability to conduct any real interviews, combined with being packed into a claustrophobic press area, leads to a gradual build-up of frustration; finally, they begin to suspect the police of trying to control them. We curbed our freedoms to help with your investigation. The sense of having done the police a favour spreads through the room, and if the police try to hold anything back while the agreement is still in effect, the press tend to become a hysterical crowd and launch a full-on attack.
What about during Six Four? It went without saying that there would have been a coverage agreement in place. But the Prefectural HQ had concealed the kidnapper’s third call, forsaking their obligation to provide case information. They’d gone back on the promise they’d made to the press, and in the worst way possible. The bond of trust between the police and the media had been severed fourteen years ago; it had nothing to do with the present issue of anonymity.
The press would have lashed out, torn any confidence in the authority of the police to shreds. And that would have been only a small sign of the storm yet to come. How many reporters would there have been, jammed together in the Six Four press room? Even the new recruits would be veteran reporters by now. Many would be editors, branch heads; many more would hold key positions in their respective head offices. They had all been there. They would have all felt shock, then outrage, at the deception; they would be vocal in their censure of the force. Their voices would become the voices of their companies, then the voice of the mass media, as it rallied against the NPA. The opposition party would have gained political traction. The media’s impassioned lobbying might have even influenced debates over bills on privacy and individual rights.
Damn fool . . .
Mikami let out a harsh grunt.
Urushibara’s crime deserved the harshest punishment. One district police inspector’s attempt to shirk responsibility could have brought the entire organization to its knees. But . . . no, the real war criminal was Director Seitaro Kyuma, who had been in charge of Criminal Investigations at the time. He had turned a blind eye to one individual’s deception, and in the process had made it a crime committed by the organization itself. The letter Koda had delivered to him had been a cry from the heart. But Kyuma had crushed it underfoot. The man had thought himself an intellectual, always dressed sharply, but he’d lacked any real skill when it came to actual case work: he’d chosen to reward Urushibara for the decision he’d made in the field.
Fair enough, he’d done it to protect the force. Both the magnitude of the case and the scope of the error itself made the information too dangerous to be made public. The timing had been off, too. It had been days since the error had taken place, Shoko had been found dead and the force had already been facing mounting criticism. Mikami understood how difficult it would have been to stand before the lines of cameras and admit there had been another phone call.
Even so . . .