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[Gene]

The website Prachatai has a long and surprising interview in English with Pravit Rojanaphruk, who is described as "senior journalist" at The Nation. In summary, Pravit criticizes the mainstream press in Thailand as being too dominated by the old vested interests that ousted Thaksin by coup. He says that the coup and events since have really made Thailand's problems and divisions much worse:

One point I want to make is that the mainstream media does not accept that the costs after the coup in solving political problems by means of a coup were very high. Every day we see the mainstream media ask how much Thaksin enriched himself from the country but no one asks how much the country lost in capital after the coup if calculated in money.

In particular, the media does not accept the fact that every day the not insubstantial group of red shirts have many questions about double standards, especially transparency and accountability of the old elite which the red shirts call the ‘amat’. If you read the red shirt press, you see that they savage the old elite and what cannot be denied is that many of the red shirts’ questions are questions that must be answered. And it’s a pity that mainstream media pretend not to see that these questions are legitimate and should be asked and are looking for answers.

There's one factual gem of a comment in the middle of the interview that knocked my sock off:

Even today, under a government that claims to be elected, there are some suspicious deals because the agreement to set up the Abhisit government was negotiated at the house of Gen Anupong Paojinda.

So much for the good general's protests that he doesn't get involved in politics.

The full interview can be read at : http://www.prachatai.com/english/node/1677

[B.I.G.]

Good interview, but you have to ask yourself what this man is doing working for The Nation, which has become the biggest media whore in town serving the interests of the ruling class. He criticizes the media for praising the coup in 2006, but ignores the fact that his own newspaper led the praise. If the guy really believes in what he says, you would think he would have resigned from the paper long ago. Maybe that's the problem in a nutshell: the people who call themselves journalists either have no integrity or lack the courage to practice what they preach.