Uneven brightness is less likely to occur in lighting devices at low cost. A backlight unit 12 includes LEDs 17, a chassis 14 having a bottom plate 14a and housing the LEDs 17, and an LED drive controller 24 controlling drive of the LEDs 17. The LEDs 17 are arranged in a matrix in row and column directions (X-axis direction and Y-axis direction) along the bottom plate 14a, forming respective LED groups 25 each along the row direction. The LED groups 25 include a middle LED group 28 and an end side LED group 29. The middle LED group 28 is located in a middle portion of the bottom plate 14a in the column direction group and the end side LED group 29 is located closer to an end of the bottom part from the middle portion group. The LED drive controller 24 controls light of at least one of the middle LED group 28 and the end side LED group 29 such that the end side LED group 29 has relatively high brightness and the middle LED group 28 has relatively low brightness.