NHK’s “Close-up Gendai+” took up the issue of suicide as a result of school bullying, focusing on cases in which the parents of children who left suicide notes saying they had been bullied at school have reacted strongly to the investigation results issued by independent panels tasked by local education boards with determining what happened to the victims. Guest commentators speculated that in many cases the panel members were not able to establish a relationship of trust with the victims’ families perhaps because they tried to be “neutral” in investigating the circumstances surrounding the suicide.