Media groups slam 'Time' magazine
The Thai Journalists Association and the Thai Broadcasters Association yesterday sent a letter to the management of Time magazine to present the truth regarding deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's allegation against the Thai media.
The letter read as follows:
Dear Editor,
Shame on your interview with Thaksin Shinawatra (Time Asia edition Feb 13).
Time magazine allowed Thaksin to tell lies. Thaksin has the audacity to say that the Thai press printed "groundless information" about him and that he never "intervened" in Thai media activities or closed them down. Let the truth be told.
Before he came to power, the Thai press was considered one of the freest in the world, ranking 29th in the survey done by Freedom House in 2000. During his reign until September 19, the Thai press fell to a depressing 107th position last year.
Similar conclusions can be found on indexes and reported by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Frontiers. Thaksin constantly interfered with the Thai print and broadcast media using advertising revenues and stock acquisitions as key strategies. He shut down community radios, websites and TV programmes critical of him.
Political power was used to intimidate the media, particularly the broadcast media, which are largely owned by the state. The management of these outlets came under tremendous government pressure to put him in a positive light, while those who failed to conform or attempted to expose corruption faced the risk of being intimidated through various means, including the threat of staggering lawsuits.
The legal battles between Shin Corp, which is owned by the Shinawatra family, and the Thai Post and media rights activist Supinya Klangnarong, are some of the cases in point. English language daily, the Bangkok Post, also faced the wrath of Thaksin after reporting about cracks on the runway at the Suvarnabhumi International Airport.
We are opposed to all kinds of media interference, intervention or intimidation, and have protested strongly against signs of such actions by the leaders of the September 19 coup. But the truth is, so far, no Thai leaders have messed up the Thai media more than Thaksin.
- Thai Journalists Association & the Thai Broadcasters Association
The Thai media has no shame, really. They are so insulated in their bubble of Thaksin hate, right-wing Thai nationalism and arrogant self-righteousness that they have no clue what it means to be journalists.
1. The TJA and TBA have a lot of audacity to condemn Time for interviewing Thaksin, the democratically elected leader of country that was overthrown in a coup. The Thai media seriously expects the international media to do their bidding and ignore Thaksin just because they say he is a bad man. This shows you the warped mentality of the Thai media. They actually believe that the world's news media should behave as irresponsibly as they do.
2. "Time allowed Thaksin to tell lies." Read that statement carefully. I love how the Thai media thinks it is Time's responsibility for Thaksin's lies. In other words, the Thai news media believes that it is never a Thai's fault for telling his own lies, and it is better to blame foreigners for "allowing" it to happen. The Thai news media "allowed" Thaksin to lie for six years and did nothing about it. But when a foreign news agency "allows" Thaksin to bullshit, they get up in arms. The Thai news media has always operated from a set of double standards. In other words, the Thai media can cower in fear to Thaksin or do the bidding of military dictatorships, but the foreign media is not even allowed to speak with Thaksin, and if they do, they will condemn it day after day in a burst of nationalistic tirades, such as what we witnessed with Singapore lately.
As for Thaksin's lies, the fact is the Thai media hasn't printed one shred of evidence that could be used to indict Thaksin of anything, legal or otherwise. They have done no investigative reports. They have uncovered no evidence. The Thai media expects the foreign media to take it at its word, yet the Thai media has produced no words worthy of support, besides Thaksin is a bad man Other than that, what evidence has it produced? No Thai media outlet has printed or broadcast a story demonstrating Thaksin, one of his cabinet ministers, or one of his cronies threatening to shut down a media source or threatening to withhold money from a media source.
3. The fact that the Thai media would rather engage in self-censorship or cave to pressure in order to avoid going to to court or to avoid losing ad revenue should really tell you the state of Thai journalism. The Thai media neither has courage nor integrity. And if they had facts, why should they be afraid of going to court? Is the Thai media admitting that the Thai judicial system is hopelessly corrupt?
4. While it is true that the Thai government shut down websites that were critical of Thaksin, it never shut down any major Thai media outlets, like the Manager website, which was run by Thaksin's arch-nemesis. What is ironic about this letter is that the Thai media condemns Time for allowing Thaksin to lie in the interview and not censoring him, yet in the same protest letter condemns Thaksin for censorship. When it comes to the foreign press, especially the Western press, the Thai media has double standards. Further, the Thai media hasn't complained about Thakin's interview with Al Jazeera.
5. The problem with the Thai media is not the government, but its own low standards. Anybody can watch any Thai TV channel or read any Thai newspaper to see that the Thai media has no dedication to producing high quality, truthful news programs. The Thai media, especially broadcast journalists, are more concerned with death, scandal, television soap stars, innuendo, and poorly thought out opinion pieces. Since the coup, The Nation, the Bangkok Post and other Thai newspapers have had the so-called cloak of censorship thrown off, yet not once during this time has any Thai newspaper uncovered through a fact based investigative report any of Thaksin's dirty dealings, illegalities, or lese majestie.
Since Thaksin has been deposed, the Thai media has not once done any investigations into any of the human right abuses that occurred during his tenure. They have not printed one piece of evidence linking Thaksin to the massive corruption in state mega projects, or deaths in the South, or the extrajudicial killings of 3000 Thai citizens during the War on Drugs, or the mismanagement of Tsunami relief aid, and a host of other supposed crimes. I am the first to admit that it is difficult to find empirical evidence, because the Thai state is hopelessly ingrained with a corrupt culture, but the Thai media hasn't even bothered to link Thaksin to any of his so-called crimes with circumstantial evidence.
Also, the Thai media hasn't gone after corrupt military officers, police officers, bureaucrats, and politicians who served under Thaksin. There has been no attempt at connect the dots reporting.
Further, the media has done nothing to protect Thai democracy, except produce a lot of innuendo. The Thai media condemns Thaksin for destroying Thai democracy when the Thai media has been cowering in fear of losing money or upsetting the faces of bureaucrats and politicians instead of doing its job as a producer of news and a revealer of facts in a democratic society.
And to make my even point more crystal clear concerning the worthlessness of the Thai media. Instead of doing its own independent investigation, it is waiting with baited breath to print the revelations of military dictatorship concerning the nefarious actions of the last government. The Thai media actually believes that it is doing its job by printing what a military junta tells them to print. The Thai media actually believes that it doesn't have to investigate the former government, the current government investigating the previous government, or any of the investigative bodies that have been ordered to sort through all these messes. In other words, the Thai media is sitting on its ass and doing nothing but complaining, monitoring Thaksin's movements all over the globe, and waiting for orders from the junta.
Am I the only one who is calling them out on their absurdity?
The Thai news media is unprofessional, a regional embarrassment, and the lackey of a military dictatorship. It has no right to make a professional judgment against anybody.
1 comment:
Don't forget that while Thaksin shut down a handful of community radio stations and a few thousand websites during his 5 years in power, in just 4 months the junta has shut down thousands of community radio stations and blocked 5x more websites than Thaksin.
Yet the media aren't protesting this at all - they're actually praising the junta!
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