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The story
Yahoo! News reported that a veteran Fuji TV employee had quit after being relentlessly badmouthed by a subordinate in a group chat. The network, once the reigning ‘Triple Crown’ ratings champion, has reportedly been struggling with core viewer ratings in recent years. On 5ch’s Geisou Sokuho+ board (Entertainment & Sports News), the thread turned into a definitional debate over whether ‘power harassment from a subordinate toward a superior’ can even exist, with the conversation spreading to real cases of reverse power harassment and the network’s reputation for hiring through personal connections. Plenty of replies, meanwhile, took issue with the headline’s wording itself.
“A Boss Who’s Useless” — Fuji TV Veteran Employee Quit Over ‘Power Harassment From a Subordinate’… Relentlessly Badmouthed in a Group Chat
Fuji TV once ruled unchallenged as the king of television, holding the ‘Triple Crown’ of ratings all to itself.
But in recent years, the network has continued to struggle in the ‘core viewer ratings’ that every network now treats as the top priority, trailing behind Nippon TV, TV Asahi, and TBS — it’s no longer rare for it to sink to fourth place among the commercial key stations.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
4ch – TBS
7ch – TV Tokyo
10ch – Nippon TV
There's no such thing as power harassment from a subordinate.
The reporter who wrote this is an idiot
Reverse power harassment has actually become an issue lately
A public servant was even disciplined for it not long ago
So you're saying the old Kawadacho location was better, location-wise?
Does this reporter think any workplace bullying automatically counts as power harassment?
Even short of quitting, it's not unusual for managers to lose their footing on how to deal with subordinates and end up demoted, or in bad cases, transferred out to another post
Maybe the power comes from this subordinate's parents or something?
Someone with lower rank and no power behind them can't commit power harassment by definition
Are reporters nothing but idiots?
When asked for comment, Fuji TV gave this response:
'We decline to comment on matters regarding individual personnel.'
Oh my, oh my? Fuji TV really stepped in it here
From now on, when Fuji TV goes to question crime suspects, politicians, or scandal-hit celebrities, they're going to get that exact same line thrown back at them
And this time, they won't have any grounds to complain about it
No matter how good you are at your job, you get mocked and picked on for just two things:
① Being bald
② Being fat
Try to call someone out and you get reported to the hotline instantly
Then upper management comes down on you and you take the fallout
I can't deal with this anymore
And honestly, how many guys in their 40s are neither ① nor ②? None. None of them, you idiots
There's always someone who senses something's off, but they look the other way out of fear it'll come back on them
Probably because he's the one in the higher position, he figured if he did the same thing, the harassment accusation would land on him
The subordinate, being an idiot, never thought badmouthing the boss could count as harassment
You broadcast media people are the ones who created this atmosphere where an older person or boss saying anything gets treated as a huge deal, while a younger person or subordinate can say whatever they want with no consequences
This station's basically a pit of scorpions (a nod to 'kodoku' — the old ritual where poisonous creatures are thrown together to devour each other until one survives)
'Getting angry' is the wrong approach
'Correcting' is right
If you correct someone properly, even if it gets spread around, a third party can evaluate it and judge who was actually right
It's really simple: any statement a working adult makes in a professional setting carries responsibility, regardless of rank
And any act that violates someone's human rights, unrelated to job duties, position, or contract, is simply unacceptable — full stop
The bad habit of judging whether something's okay based on who holds what status always just creates problems, case closed
Does the term 'power harassment' even exist in other countries?
You can tell right away that these '-hara' abbreviations are something only Japanese idiots came up with
Background and key points of this discussion
“Power harassment” was originally defined by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare as conduct by someone in a superior position — like a boss — abusing that advantage. In recent years, however, cases of collective harassment from subordinates who hold no authority over personnel decisions or supervision — so-called “reverse power harassment” — have also started being treated as labor issues. The thread was split over whether this reversed scenario can really count as harassment at all, and many posters took issue with the wording of the headline itself. The fact that the conversation drifted into Fuji TV’s history of connection-based hiring and past scandals is itself a sign of distrust toward the reporting. It’s also worth noting that by foregrounding the phrase “power harassment from a subordinate,” the headline turned the very definition of the term into the central point of debate.
*This article is an excerpt and summary compiled from the 5ch (Geisou Sokuho+) thread “‘A Boss Who’s Useless’ — Fuji TV, Veteran Employee Quit Over ‘Power Harassment From a Subordinate’… Relentlessly Badmouthed in a Group Chat.”
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