Sunbelt Asia Information Service

While the press is often scorned and made the butt of jokes, it’s also taken for granted by most in the world. But in many countries – including Thailand – the concept of a “free press” is either completely unknown or only partially true.

Each year on May 3 UNESCO marks “World Press Freedom Day,” an occasion to look at how the media is faring in nations big and small and bring to light the many perils journalists face in keeping the public informed.

Many of the issues UNESCO highlights deal with “freedom of information,” the right of the people to know what their governments are doing. With so much of the news going online these days, however, new issues about Internet censorship by governments and distinctions between conventional journalists from casual bloggers have become hot-button topics.

For the first time, the number of online journalists in prison has almost matched the number of jailed print and broadcast journalists, according to the Center for International Media Assistance.

“The battle for press freedom has moved online,” said Robert Mahoney, an international journalist and deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. In its 2009 prison census, CPJ found that at least 68 bloggers, Web-based reporters and online editors are under arrest worldwide, constituting about half of all journalists now in jail, he said.

Press and Internet freedom, of course, have been contentious issues in Thailand, whose record on press freedom continues to decline.

A Freedom House “Global Press Freedom 2010” survey placed Thailand at 124th out of 192 globally, tied with the Seychelles and behind such places as Kuwait, East Timor, Ukraine and Uganda. It Asia, Thailand ranks 27th out of 40 countries.

“Thai press freedom used to be for decades the model in Southeast Asia,” The Nation newspaper opines in today’s edition. The editorial blames both the hostile policies of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and the current government’s “one-sided” approach to limiting anti-government information and opinion for the decline of the country’s press.

“The continuing political crisis has attracted the best and worst in Thai journalists. Most have taken sides in the existing political polarization - sometimes out of necessity and sometimes out of sympathy. Whatever it is, the Thai media community has been under attack from all concerned parties, especially the government and the public.

“Thai media communities need to further improve their professionalism through better understanding of societal and political developments,” the paper continued. “They need new ways of writing and analyzing the current state of Thai society. So far, they have failed because they tend to see their own country through their distorted lenses.

“Without a rejuvenated Thai media, its freedom will be under constant threat again because whatever it writes will be viewed with hostility.”

The Nation just had to do it didn't they, once again laying the blame on Thaksin for their shortcomings.

To be fair, if you read the Nation article, they took the current government more to task (3 graphs) than Thaksin (1 paragraph). And, in this case it's true. Just look at how Thaksin cowed the Bangkok Post over its BKK airport story and then went about suing any and everyone who published anything negative.

The point of the story is that both sides are to blame and that the media has to stop taking sides and find its own way again.