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Asia-Pacific / Japan · Politics

Japanese city accused of inflating census population numbers

Rank
Running
46h
Updated
16h ago
Momentum
-16%
Outlets
4
Regions
3
Countries
4
Languages
4

+0

New York Times United States · English 6 Oct, 04:01 UTC

The only English report

Read it also in Nederlands (1) · नेपाली (1) · ไทย (1) · +2 languages

Read at New York Times

How it spread

Outlets covering the story by hours since its first article: one at the start, 4 after 47 hours.

1 2 3 4
0h 12h 24h 36h

Outlets, by hours since the first article

  1. First outlet: New York Times, 6 Oct, 04:01 UTC.
  2. Second country: Thailand, with Thairath.
  3. Second region: Asia-Pacific, with Thairath.
  4. Fastest hour: +2 outlets from 7 Oct, 10:03 UTC.
  5. Now: 4 outlets.

Where it travelled

48 of 48 hours

Earlier Later

The 4 countries whose press covered it, the later a country joined, the more it stands out. Open the live map

The regions

25%50%25%

  • Americas 1 outlet · 1 country · 25%
  • Asia-Pacific 2 outlets · 2 countries · 50%
  • Europe 1 outlet · 1 country · 25%

First movers

  1. New York Times 6 Oct, 04:01 UTC
  2. Thairath +28h 23m
  3. NU.nl +30h 2m
  4. Ratopati +30h 57m

The figures

Coverage
4 outlets in 4 countries, across 3 regions. The article links are kept for good for every story that reaches the map. Of the 4 outlets, 4 private. A count of countries is not a count of independent press systems.
Countries by region
Americas 1: United States. Asia-Pacific 2: Nepal, Thailand. Europe 1: Netherlands. The region a country’s press publishes from, as the feed list files it; the outlets that publish from no single country count as one country under International.
Languages
English, Nepali, Dutch, Thai.
Timeline
Earliest article New York Times, 6 Oct 2026, 04:01 UTC. First seen 6 Oct 2026, 04:20 UTC. Last seen 7 Oct 2026, 10:58 UTC. The earliest article is the earliest claimed publication time among the outlets Loudest reads, a claim rather than an observation and not a record of who broke the story (the data files call it the lead article); first seen is when Loudest first fetched an article of it, from which the running time counts.
Classification
Region Asia-Pacific, Japan. Topic Politics. Hard news Judged hard news. On the map. Whether the story is hard news under the rule in the methodology, judged from its headlines by a model; a story judged outside the rule is left off the map and kept here. The region and country are where the story is about, not where it was covered.
Score
0.22, as of now. One vote per general-press country and a smaller term for outlets, each counted from the moment it joined the story and fading on its own clock, so a late article does not renew the rest. A day in the archive keeps the score it was ranked by that day.
Day by day

Outlets and countries are the story’s whole life as of that midnight; the 24-hour columns are that day’s own coverage; the last column is the methodology version the day was measured under, and a day that spans a change of version shows the first and last, linked to the changelog that lists every version between. A day marked partial is one Loudest read only in part: fewer than 130 of its 144 ten-minute runs, or more than 30 minutes missed at its start or end.

Day Rank Score Outlets Countries 24h outlets 24h countries Method
7 Oct 2026 277 3.60 4 4 3 3 4.6

This record as JSON, CC BY 4.0.

How this was measured

This page describes measured coverage: which of the outlets Loudest reads carried the story, from how many countries and in how many languages, and when. It says nothing about whether the story is true, important or well reported.

Started 6 Oct, 04:20 UTC · Updated 7 Oct, 10:58 UTC

Covered by 4 outlets

Pin outlets you trust with ☆ and they come first in every story.

Americas 1 outlet

  • New York Times United States 6 Oct, 04:01 UTC
    As Japan’s Population Shrinks, a City Is Accused of Padding Census Numbers

Asia-Pacific 2 outlets

  • Ratopati Nepal 7 Oct, 10:58 UTC
    जापानमा जनगणना : फर्जी जनसंख्या थपिएपछि प्रहरीले मार्‍यो छापा
  • Thairath Thailand 7 Oct, 08:23 UTC
    ญี่ปุ่นสอบเมืองโทยามะ ปลอมตัวเลขสำมะโนประชากรเกินจริงกว่า 2,000 คน

Europe 1 outlet

  • NU.nl Netherlands 7 Oct, 10:03 UTC
    Japanse stad verzon mogelijk 2.000 mensen om bevolkingsafname te verbergen
Read at New York Times

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