Media freedom extends beyond the political realm

[Lite Beer]

EDITORIAL
Media freedom extends beyond the political realm
The Nation

BANGKOK: -- As well as the threat that military rule poses to journalism, there is the challenge of personal greed

Thailand's leading media umbrella groups issued a statement last Sunday on the declining status of press freedom in this country. The statement dwelled on the obvious problem - post-coup restrictions on freedom of expression - while overlooking subtler complications in the modern media landscape.

Non-political influences on the role of the media escaped the groups' scrutiny. While the statement might remind the military rulers that they are being watched, it failed to deliver any such warning to media professionals.

"Freedom" in the context of the joint statement refers to the right to report without fear of persecution. But the word also means the right to report without worrying about negative reaction from advertisers and corporate publicists. It also intimates an ability to serve the public interest with having to please other parties that might offer the reporter personal benefits.

Military clampdowns come and go, but other restrictions on media freedom, however subtle, have become permanent fixtures, practices that are detrimental to media professionalism over the long term. They do not involve strongly worded warnings read on TV by men in uniform, or defamation lawsuits launched by politicians in power to block investigative journalists.

Here we are referring to the threat inherent in sweet smiles, free meals, expensive gifts and red-carpet invitations. Journalists must deal with these "flattering" obstacles to truth far more often than phone calls from the military or police or political leaders. Many journalists have been "flattered" for so long that they no longer recognise such gifts as threats to their professionalism, instead regarding them as deserved perks of the job.

Public relations agents are paid and pressured to get journalists on board when new products and promotions are launched, and they're often paid extra if they can get a specific quota of reporters to interview their clients.

The client might, for example, ask to have five reporters lined up, and if the PR firm can deliver that many, a certain amount of money is guaranteed - regardless of whether the reporters actually write stories, favourable or otherwise.

Junior and mid-ranking journalists go through this process frequently, some feeling awkward about it, others crossing the credibility line without realising it, and still others willingly playing corporate ball.

The higher the journalist's rank, the more appealing the offers and incentives become.

In this way Thailand has fostered too many media professionals who think they enjoy freedom of the press when in fact their time is being stolen, precious time that instead could be spent exposing government or corporate shortcomings or pressing social needs.

Such "purchased" journalists are often taunted for working for corporate perks, rather than pursuing the avocation's nobler goals. They are content to tell the reader what their "sponsors" want them to say. Journalism is a career path strewn with ethical challenges, from Day 1 until the day the reporter retires. The media umbrella groups did right to try and protect the integrity of the profession in terms of political reporting, but that's only half their job.

We need to see a campaign that reminds Thai journalists that "freedom" has to exist inside as well as be enabled from without.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/Media-freedom-extends-beyond-the-political-realm-30259698.html

-- The Nation 2015-05-09

[noitom]

The gold standard for press freedom is the quality and accuracy of facts in its investigative pieces. Thailand has no such thing as investigative jouranlism. The Thai press is muzzled, cutoff and lacks the fundamental skill to actually do an investigative journalism project.

[BigBadGeordie]

I take it, that as a reporter for The Nation, the only independent newspaper in Thailand, this reporter has never accepted such "flattery".

My arsr.

[Jai Dee]

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[Lupatria]

Questions and critical thinking, the ability to build your own opinion is not supported in the Thai “education system”.

If a rookie journalist brainwashed to obey from pre-school to university, who got the job rather by patronage than qualification gets in the industry when and where should he/she understand, learn, and practice investigative journalism?

[Yunla]

I'm quite an obsessive news-reader, and I do love to read opinion articles and random thoughts. I like writing them too. I see it as an instructional and healthy passtime, and on some level I see it as a basic human instinct for people to analyse the world around them.

But not everybody reads things in the same way, and not everybody can just absorb the information as an end in itself, when people start using the media for negative destructive rhetoric, there needs to be laws to stop media abuse by corrosive ideologies. I think freedom has a disclaimer which says "be a decent person."

But at times it gets so far down the road, it feels like a choice between walking on a wire, or wearing one.

[Godders]

An area of legitimate public concern conspicuous by its absence in this article is the relationship between powerful politicians and the mass media moguls whose publications shape political opinion.

Assuming there are Thai equivalents of Rupert Murdoch, whose Sun newspaper is widely credited with propelling former British Prime Minister Tony Blair into power, you can bet they are already already being assiduously wooed by Thai movers and shakers with an eye on the upcoming general elections.

Clearly, there are serious questions to be raised about the ethics and culture of the Kingdom's Thai-language and English-language newspapers. But will the "Thai-style" democracy by the current leadership eventually lead to a much-needed Leveson-type Inquiry into the Thai Press?

Don't hold your breath.

[Suffinator]

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So the freedom to express yourself freely in an open and transparent way is no longer acceptable on TV?

[BigBadGeordie]

A post referring to the Thai government as a dictatorship has been removed from this thread.

Please refer to this pinned topic in the News Forum.

Please use discretion in your references to the government. Phrases which can be considered as anti-coup will be removed. Referring to Thailand or the government as a dictatorship, military dictatorship or other such terms will be removed.

So the freedom to express yourself freely in an open and transparent way is no longer acceptable on TV?

Don't think it has ever been acceptable!

[wabothai]

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A post referring to the Thai government as a dictatorship has been removed from this thread.

Please refer to this pinned topic in the News Forum.

Please use discretion in your references to the government. Phrases which can be considered as anti-coup will be removed. Referring to Thailand or the government as a dictatorship, military dictatorship or other such terms will be removed.

So the freedom to express yourself freely in an open and transparent way is no longer acceptable on TV?

Unfortunately not. TV can be shut down by the junta when there is too much agitation for the generals.