Friday, 31 October 2008
Thailand: Media is Key Battleground in Conflict
The daily Kom Chad Luk, which is controlled by the Matichon group, was the only local newspaper - apart from the little-read pro-government Prachatouch - to report Crown Princess Sirindhorn’s remark in the United States three weeks ago to the effect that the PAD was fighting not to protect the monarchy as claimed, but for ‘themselves’.
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Media is Key Battleground in conflict
31 October 2008
BANGKOK: Thailand’s media and foreign news outlets have become key battlegrounds in the country’s divisive political conflict, with clear differences in the way the issues are reported at home and abroad.
So far, the anti-government People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), which remains encamped at Government House protected by its own militia, has been winning what one member of the ruling People Power Party described as a ‘war of perception’ - at least in the Thai media.
But the PAD has repeatedly criticised the foreign media from its stage at Government House - from where proceedings are beamed live to around 10 million viewers of PAD co-leader Sondhi Limthongkul’s cable channel ASTV.
If ASTV is the propaganda arm of the PAD, however, pro-government TV is not much better.
‘The people don’t know who to believe any more,’ one senior Thai government official struggling to maintain her own neutrality told The Straits Times.
The PAD says the foreign media fails to understand Thailand, insists on projecting ‘Western-style democracy’ as the ideal, and has been seduced by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra into painting him as a democrat.
The right-wing movement also says the West’s brand of democracy does not work in Thailand, where electoral politics has been corrupted, and wants a semi-appointed rather than wholly elected Parliament to address this problem.
The gap between the foreign and Thai print media was underscored by Thaksin’s last statement issued from his refuge in London, in which he addressed his ‘friends in the international media’ and pointedly remarked that they were more balanced than the Thai media.
The role of the media is being hotly debated by academics and analysts.
Some have been critical of the foreign media. Writing on the New Mandala blog, academic Michael Connors of Australia’s La Trobe University said that most overseas commentary had ‘whitewashed so-called democratic pro-Thaksin forces’.
But independent analysts also note that the foreign media has sent reporters to the north and north-east, where there is more support for Thaksin, while the Bangkok-based Thai media remains almost exclusively focused on the capital, where the PAD has most of its support.
‘One of the biggest failures of the Thai media is that it has ignored the voices of people outside Bangkok, or even those in Bangkok with different opinions,’ senior reporter Pravit Rojanaphruk of The Nation told a recent panel discussion at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT).
That might have something to do with the fact that the foreign media is not the only target of the PAD.
Thai media and local writers who do not toe the movement’s line are subjected to blistering attacks too.
The daily Kom Chad Luk, which is controlled by the Matichon group, was the only local newspaper - apart from the little-read pro-government Prachatouch - to report Crown Princess Sirindhorn’s remark in the United States three weeks ago to the effect that the PAD was fighting not to protect the monarchy as claimed, but for ‘themselves’.
The PAD responded with a call to boycott the Matichon group, and there was a notable silence from the rest of the Thai print media over this attack on one of their own.
The pro-PAD coverage of events by Thailand’s mainstream print media led respected media analyst Supinya Klangnarong to call the current atmosphere one of ‘fear and uncertainty’.
Also at the FCCT discussion, Ms Supinya - who was associated with the PAD in early 2006 but became disillusioned and left - noted that it was the foreign media which many Thais had come to rely on for balanced news, while at home ‘it is very difficult to criticise the PAD, or even the government’.
‘Under Thaksin, there was fear and self-censorship. Now there is institutionalised censorship on sensitive issues.’
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