6	Media, reports, the, red, shirts

Supalak in The Nation (yes, The Nation)

The government, with collaboration from the mainstream media, managed to portray itself as an angel and the red-shirt group as former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's evil lackeys - ready to use all violent means to bring their boss back to power. Visions of last April's bloodshed have been planted in the public mind many times a day to show the red-shirt group is nothing but a bloodthirsty monster

Even a foreign diplomat like British Ambassador Quinton Quayle subscribed to such discourse as he rushed to see Pheu Thai Party leader Yongyut Wichaidit on Tuesday, to urge the party with its strong links to the red shirts not to use violence in the weekend demonstrations.

Nobody knows what exactly will happen this weekend, but Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban floated many ideas and led the public to understand the red protesters would explode at some 40 locations around Bangkok.

IPS on the media. First, Pravit:

"Thai society is very divided politically and I don't think the mass media are helping at all. Rather, they have become part of this political division," Pravit Rojanaphruk, a senior journalist at the English-language daily 'The Nation', said in an interview.
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Pravit explains that majority of the mainstream media have become polarised into the 'yellow' – the colour of the supporters of the government and those against Thaksin -- and 'red' media.
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For Pravit, space must be created for all sides in the fractious political scene to express themselves. "I think we have to open the space for different voices to end this division once and for all."
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But in truth, the pro-Thaksin supporters' mistrust of the mainstream media has some basis, Pravit explains.

"After the September 2006 coup d'etat that ousted Thaksin, the editorials that came out in the mainstream media all declared the coup as justifiable and I think that was the genesis of the view that mainstream media are anti-red shirts," he said.

BP: A number of large media outlets cearly are aligned with one side, particularly the yellows as the article also states:

In a society so divided politically – as it has been since the 2006 military coup against Thaksin – there is only a small percentage of Thai media that try to fairly present both sides of the story, according to Chiranuch Premchaiporn, editor of the independent web newspaper Prachatai.com.

"I think only about 30 percent are trying to present balanced stories about this current political situation. The rest all have taken sides," she said.
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"Most of the stories we see now in relation to the rallies is a projection of how the violence will happen. We don't see them questioning the government side on how they're going to commit to using non-violent measures when trying to contain the crowd, for example," she said.
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It is unfortunate that some media institutions "seem to want to sow panic and fear in the society (by the kind of stories they release)," adds Chiranuch.

BP: For most of last week, you had half a dozen Democrats talking how there would be violence with 30-40 bombs in Bangkok. This seems to reduce in number by yesterday (will try to do a couple of posts on the claims). Panic sells papers though....

IPS with the views of another journalist:

"A big mess" is how a journalist working for a leading Bangkok-based daily, who requested anonymity, calls the Thai media when it comes to covering the political tensions in the country.

" 'Bangkok Post' seems to be leaning towards the 'centre red', while 'The Nation' is now extreme yellow. In that sense, you have a balance of views," quipped the journalist, referring to the two English-language dailies in Thailand.

He added: "'Bangkok Post' seems to take sadistic glee in running reds-related stories to make the yellow feel downtrodden while 'The Nation' runs yellow stories to make the reds feel rotten. I think both sides want to win."

BP: Bangkok Post is centre red?? Really? Well, in comparison with The Nation they are a bastion of neutrality, but wouldn't say they are centre red. For other Suranand, you have Veera, Atiya and Nattaya.

Plenty of other quotes from that IPS article.

For TV news, in BP's opinion, ThaiPBS' evening news and late news/interview segment have the best political coverage and try to be impartial. For the print media, well, it varies so widely.

btw, should we assume by his referring, sarcastically, to the red shirts being "evil lackeys" that Supalak is a BP reader?