Bridgestone (they sell tires) is connected with many Japanese automobile companies (they need tires).
Many Japanese media outlets are then sponsored by these automobile companies.

I see. Here is the reason people
don’t know about the issue in Japan. 

Bridgestone's website is slightly different
in Japanese than in English.  They emphasize their environmental projects on their
website as well as an “artificial dolphin project” which is helping an injured dolphin, "Fuji."  They are also a member of the government environmental group called “Team minus 6%”
which Prime Minister Koizumi started to reduce CO2 emission. Moreover, (it gets
even better) one of the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) monitoring
company ranks Bridgestone as one of the top 50 socially responsible company. They got
the Public Eye Award in 2007 for  Worst Global Corporation because of their  slave-like conditions for workers and environmental degradation
in Liberia.  Maybe the monitoring company misunderstood the meaning of the award. I wonder
how much we don’t know about what we should know.