Press, freedom, Thailand, drops, 130th, world

BP has blogged on Reporters Without Borders' previous report on media freedom in 2007 (Thailand was then 135th in the world). This improved to 124th in 2008, but has now dropped back to 130th in the world. The reason for the decline is lese majeste and associated laws as RSF explains:

As the end of King Bumibol Adulyadej’s reign approaches, the monarchy has become an ever more sensitive issue. At the start of January 2009, the information and communications minister announced that the government was going to invest 500 million baht (1.1 million euros) to put in place a national filtering system to block websites hosted abroad that could damage the monarchy. Since December 2008, the ministry has decided to step up the fight against the crime of lese majeste online. More than 4,000 websites have been blocked since the start of 2009. However, official sources say that only 4,800 pages have been blocked for this reason since March 2008.

BP: It seems that RSF does not believe in the "Abhisit effect". To be honest, BP is a little skeptical that things have got worse compared with last year. Yes, while there are more "threats", but there is significantly more reporting on "sensitive" issues now which is on the edges of the law. Now, we live by code words. There is a greater threat to journalists per se, but to BP the actual level of press freedom has not got worse.

Seven years ago, Thailand was 66th, but if reporters were to hypothetically report that a certain person was not so happy with the PM because of a business relationship with their son then those reporters would still have found themselves in trouble. Enforcement was still the same back then (a special report of The Economist was also banned back then too), but nowdays the laws are being challenged more frequently. To BP, this doesn't mean that press freedom has got worse.