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[TheYenta]

Veteran photo-journalist, Nick Nostitz, has a thoughtful article in the East Asia Journal this week, explaining why politics in Thailand gets such bad coverage by the press. Here's some of his thoughts:

'Generally speaking, the media as a whole, with few exceptions, completely missed the beginning of what may turn out to be the most important recent change in the Thai socio-political landscape. The quality of reporting on the red shirts still suffers from this oversight.

There are, of course, reasons for this. The local Thai media is under subtle but strong pressure. Several local journalists have told me that they would love to be able to work the way I do, and write what I write. They have said that if they did, they would be attacked as red shirt supporters, which would have serious consequences for their professional future. . .

For Western journalists the situation differs in some important ways. Simply, there is no money in Thai political reporting. If you cover the conflict in depth, I’d advise you to forget about earning a proper income. Western media, already in crisis with tremendous budget cuts, will not spend any money on Thailand’s problems while there are much larger stories such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Britney Spears’ mental state.

Larger networks have tried to report as well as they can, especially Al-Jazeera and the BBC, but when there is little space available for such coverage, there will be only a small budget to go around. The academic world has similarly ignored the red shirt movement, and to a large degree still does. There has been no long term field study done on the red shirts, and only now are there a few students, mostly foreign, who are researching the movement. Thai students—the few who care—are often cowed by the mostly yellow shirt academic establishment."

http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2010/06/22/re...al-front-lines/

[Hedda]

The point that Nostitz is trying to make is a vital one to understanding why Thailand's democracy has made so little progress since the revolution of 1932 ended the absolute monarchy. When the state owns and controls the mass media and seeks to influence all other media to tow the party line, it is extremely difficult to change the status quo.

Most Thais and farangs in Thailand lived through the killings in the infamous Thaksin drug war and never knew they had happened until after-the-fact when Thaksin's political opponents sought to make them an issue. Why? Because the mass killings simply were not reported by the government media or press at the time and there were no foreign reporters covering the story in any detail.

The same can be said for the red shirts movement, as pointed out in the linked article. Prior to the protesters coming in force to Bangkok in March, who among us knew that red shirt political rallies in Khon Kaen and Ubon were drawing crowds of over 100,000 people in the months preceding their arrival in the capital. Why ? The government media and its servile press simply did not report them and the foreign press knew little or nothing about them.

Did you know that the students at Chiang Mai University protested against the continuation of the state of emergency last week ? You certainly didn't see it on Thai TV or read about it in the mainstream newspapers. It's only through the internet and its ancillary network that news and political opposition has any chance of breaking through the wall of government censorship.

The sorry fact is that political events in Thailand that go unreported by the state-controlled media are like tress falling in a deserted forest: no sound; no impact. It's also why the internet is so important to use, preserve and protect if you live in a society where the government wants to control everything you read and hear.