Yesterday afternoon I joined the AUA conversation session. In the class, teacher asked students about our opinions on a news that two people are killed on an anti-government protest camp in Bangkok early morning that day (May 15th, 2014). None of 10 Thai students heard of the news. The non-Thai teacher, the only one in that room who knew the story, said it was a big headline on BBC news. Therefore, I wonder why Thais did not know what happen in our own country while it was big news in the world.
According to “Deadly attack on Thai protest camp in Bangkok”, Three people have been killed and more than 20 others injured in an attack on an anti-government protest camp at Democracy Monument in Thailand that morning, even there were plenty of soldiers around when it was hit by grenades and bullets, but they were powerless to stop them. Police identified two of the victims as a protester who was asleep and a protest guard who was shot.
The people, who were killed and injured intentionally, are just ordinary citizens, not criminals. Isn’t it too cruel pointing M79 to them? This is an important story. Why wouldn’t the story be spread among Thai people? After the class, I was still curious about this. For that reason, I searched Google for more information and found very few of this news in Thai website. There was a clip from morning news reporting it in less than one minute. In addition, I wanted to check whether it was my fault and I was just one of very few people not hearing the news because I didn’t very much catch up with the latest news. As a result, I post the news in a line group that has more than 10 Thais. A feedback I got was also no one heard of the news. “Okay, it may be too early for Thai news organization to verify and report the news”, I talked to myself and wait till night.
At night, I searched for the news in some Thai newspaper web pages: Daily News and Thairath. What I found from these pages was that there was the news but it was in a small space in the bottom of the pages. These news pages also shared a same biggest headline. It was a giant tree that was crowded by lottery players praying for lucks. Is the tree news more important than the murder news?
I tried to look for a reason why they didn’t state the news in the biggest headline, and I came up with some possible reasons. To begin with, they might think that the news was not important. People died every day. Three more were normal. Second, they might not know what actually happened and did not want to write what they did not know. Another possible reason is that the murder news might make readers depressed. News organizations did not want to make atmosphere in Thailand worse. Next, the news did not help they sell more newspapers as much as the lottery teller tree might do. The story that people killed because of politic issue was too boring in their opinions. It was the same as what they just reported last month and could not capture readers’ attention. It was not surprising at all. Last that I can think of is that there was some powerful person involved. The one might pull strings behind the scene, threaten and control news organizations, or the one did not actually do anything but news organizations wanted to please it and be on its side.
Are you satisfied with the quality of news reporting in Thailand?
Last week, there was a very strong earthquake in the north of Thailand. This caused some roads broken. Let’s see what Thairath reported.
From the picture, the left side is a picture of Thairath newspaper, May 5th 2014. The right one is a picture describing an earthquake in Philippines in October 2013. What do you think?
I don’t know what to believe from Thai news these days. Rumors about political and royal institution are everywhere. People that support a political side slandered another side. There are more and more criticisms that I don’t know which are true, not much different from ‘The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf story’. Last year, pregnant panda news was made big to conceal political news. Many years ago, Thaksin buying Manchester City Football Club was for the same purpose. This time, the reason that yesterday story was not widely known might not be the same reason as the two examples above, but it also make me lose believe in Thai news providers. What a shame! Important news was successfully made small.
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Reference
Deadly attack on Thai
protest camp in Bangkok. (2014, May 15). BBC News Asia. Retrieved May 15, 2014 from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27419558
I feel shocked when I saw the picture of disasters in your news blog and I think that we must concern more about the effect of Global warming that lead to the number of calamities.This news can give me something that in these days, many things have been changing all the time and human might don't know what will happen if they ignore or not care about that.
ReplyDeleteI am afraid that I have to agree with Pueng - the quality of reporting in Thailand is sometimes so poor, apart from outright lying like the stolen photograph in Thairath, that I think it must reduce the possibility of people having informed opinions on many topics. BUt then, the quality of reporting in much Western media is also pretty much garbage - I think the solution is more free speech. At least with free speech, misunderstandings and worse can be corrected. The censorship that prevents free and open discussion on some political topics cannot be healthy.
ReplyDeleteWhen a topic is censored, whether by law or by strong social sanction, then errors of opinion on that topic cannot be stated and cannot be corrected. The only way to correct a misunderstanding is for it to be stated so that it can then be proved to have been a mistake. Equally, if a popular belief cannot be challenged by opposing ideas, as Law challenges the popular belief that it's OK to eat meat, then that popular belief, however sincerely believed, cannot be well founded and cannot be known to be anything better than a falsehood protected from opposing arguments. The obvious example is when religions have laws made up to make it illegal to say that they are false, and kill or imprison people who question them - if their beliefs were true, they would not need such murderous legal protection against reason and evidence. Would they?
At the moment, and consistent with Pueng's BBC News example, I think it must be the case that on some topics important to Thai politics and society, people who read non-Thai media outside of THailand must be able to be better informed and hold more soundly based opinions than Thai people in Thailand who only read Thai media, whether in Thai or English.
Free speech is a necessary condition for knowledge on any topic, which is why good academics insist on it: it's called "academic freedom" and such free speech is a necessary condition for academic work to aspire to being knowledge rather than ignorance.
Thairath is accused for "Yellow Journalism" for a long time. They like to report sensational news which will attract more reader. The Sorayuth's morning news also had been use "Yellow Journalism" since last two year. Last year he focus too much on Panda's news and ignore political protest news.
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