EYE ON ETHICS

Mr. Anderson, born in Olean, New York in 1944, is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad and a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965 to 1967. At the time assigned to a community development role, he then worked in Thailand as a freelance writer and TEFL teacher before transferring to Iran and Saudi Arabia with his Thai wife. He founded northeast Thailand’s first local English language newspaper, The Korat Post. He also writes under the pen name Brian Knight.
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The Thai ruling elite, military, and police have relied on Thailand’s Criminal Code to silence dissent, cow the opposition and inflict prison time on those deemed to have committed various offenses, including that of lèse majesté, a law detailed in the Criminal Code’s Article 112:

“Whosoever defames, insults or threatens the King, Queen, the heir-apparent or the Regent shall be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteen years.”

This obviously puts serious restraints on efforts within the kingdom to promote ethical media reform.

Various foreign and Thai academics have commented on the feudal nature of Article 112. Well-known social critic Sulak Sivalak, whose ethics-filled books have been seized or banned by Thai authorities, has been accused many times of lèse majesté but was found not guilty in each case. Khon Kaen University lecturer David Streckfuss has also called for reform or repeal of Article 112 for both ethical and legal reasons.

Recent perceived moves against the monarchy by many pro-Thaksin Shinawatra factions and by social and media reform-minded activists, have been deemed a threat to the country’s most revered institution. As a result the Thai police, who enforce the lèse majesté law, and a wide swath of the royalist public have counter-reacted with even more strenuous use of Article 112 in public denunciations of those who have differed from conventional opinion.

Thailand’s fundamental symbols of ethics, many monks – such as the temple abbot in the photo – often find themselves subject of media coverage where allegations of sexual misconduct are made against them. When local media published accounts related to this abbot, they were accused of assaulting the nation, religion, and the king. No ethical or human rights issues relating to the case were allowed to be discussed by Thai government and Sangha officials.

The near-deity image of the Thai monarchy orchestrated by self-serving political interests in the past has led to activist reluctance in addressing question of the monarchy’s role on the one hand, and the impact of Article 112 on the other on freedom of expression, human rights and the adoption of the ethical code Thai society needs. The police play a large role in this reluctance.

In July 2007 at Thailand’s Silapakorn University, philosophy lecturer Professor Boonsong Chaisinghanon found his rector asking for copies of the examination questions he had given his students, as well as copies of the students’ answers. According to the rector, police had received a complaint that the lecturer had possibly committed lèse majesté by asking inappropriate questions in his examinations. Two of the supposedly offensive questions were: (1) Do you think the monarchy is necessary for Thai society and in what way? How should it be adapted to a democratic system? Explain your answer; (2) How does the “yellow shirt fever” reflect problems in Thai society? Are they problems that need to be tackled, and how? Explain your answer.

The questions seemed innocuous enough, but to the Royal Thai Police, monarchists and most traditional Thais, they were inappropriate because they suggest that the role of the monarchy is open to question, and that not all Thais are loyal to the monarchy. To avoid the spread of such dangerous ideas, Article 112 had not only been retained by the ruling elite but has also been frequently used to pull the carpet from under the feet of those who would question the monarchy’s role—or even to suggest that its role is open to question.

Thai traditionalists, no matter what role they play in society and whether they are Thais or ‘converted’ foreigners, freely accuse of lèse majesté those with whom they have differences of opinion. The result is that whether in academia, politics, business, government, media, and other sectors, fear restrains honest, accurate and well-meaning inquiries or criticisms from being made public or from being discussed.

The sweeping nature of Thailand’s legislation relating to control of the media is simplistic yet powerful. Section 8 of the 1941 Printing Act, for example, reads, “The Director-General of [the] Police Department is empowered to issue order, by way of publication in the Government Gazette, prohibiting the importation or bringing into the Kingdom any printed matter therein specified, either with or without any limitation of time.”

The same Act’s Section 36 reads, “When there has been a publication in a newspaper which, in the opinion of the Press Officer, might be contrary to public order or good morals, or might violate a prohibitive order…he may proceed as follows – “ the section then details how the Press Officer can issue orders to publishers for them to edit, delete, censor or even cease publication, and close their places of business, should those in power deem the printed material to be offensive.

The social mores reflected in this early Printing Act are carried over today in Thailand, where discretion is generally the option of the authorities and caution must be exercised by the media, which today include not just print but also electronic and digital. It also carries over to, believe it or not, reporting on someone else’s defamation or lèse majesté offense.

For example, Sondhi Limthongkul, media baron and former business associate of ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra, was accused of lèse majesté when he quoted from a speech by the infamous ‘Da Torpedo,’ a pro-Thaksin speaker, who had publicly noted several negative aspects of the Thai monarchy and its role in Thai society. While he did not originate the comments, Thai authorities went to the extent of investigating him for the same charge just because of his reporting. Facing overwhelming public condemnation of the unfair lèse majesté accusation, police dropped the matter.

The role of the Thai monarchy is admirable from the viewpoint of those who support it but less so from the viewpoint of those who do not. But in Thailand discussion of the role is taboo and creates very thin ice over which society is allowed to skate. The gestalt is extended into other traditional sectors of Thai society where conventional thinking is always set against the backdrop of what is deemed harmful to the monarchy or to other cherished Thai values, raising further the question of whether Thai values themselves, including ethical values, are in need of reform, and indeed have long been in need of reform.

This writer’s experience with local media in Thailand, where information and ethics share common interests, suggests the following general characteristics between media and state or private interests:

• Bangkok media are far ahead of their up-country counterparts in terms of availability of information, the willingness of those with information to share it, and in terms of ethical practices by information owners and sharers.

• Up-country media are generally information and ethics-deprived. Members of the region’s press corps have little or no training in ethics, and as a result, are liable to conduct themselves unethically when it serves their interests. In one such ethical violation, a local media representative secretly audio-taped the provincial governor’s remarks that he said he was making in confidence. The governor’s remarks were printed that week in local media. The publication totally destroyed the previously positive relationships between the governor, the media and local business interests the governor had ‘secretly’ spoken about. After, the governor stopped giving press conferences.

• Government, private and commercial interests are also largely not accountable to ethical codes. Laws exist that provide some protection, and unions offer employment assistance, but formal ethical codes are not enshrined in the Thai socio-economic infrastructure. As a result, these agencies and individuals who work for them feel little need for ethical restraint on information they provide or refuse to make available.

The above three realities, reflecting a very controlled society as far as the media are concerned, and where the very essence of being Thai means doing what everyone else does the same way they do, lead to deprivation of information and severe restrictions on how it is provided, as well as how much, to whom, and when. The Thai media are thus faced with a virtual fait accompli in attempting to apply whatever media ethics they may have. After all, if officials in private and state enterprises are so close-guarded and secretive, how else can information be obtained except by unethical means?

Compounding the issue is that the Thai Way of media reporting upcountry means working together with all other media to cover the news. This discourages enterprise reporting because ‘the system’ dictates that news and events will be provided to all the media at the same time, not to any single media agency. To make sure this system continues, companies and government departments regularly announce press conferences to brief the media on certain topics. They then provide media attendees with little gifts like pens, shirts, small bags and mementos for attending the conference. Should any of these local media bravely report news as they see it and offer critical comments, they are excluded from almost all advertising revenue. And who are the people that make this possible?

It might be called The Establishment, a confederation of local business lords and government bureaucrats who literally run the cities they operate in. It consists of chambers of commerce, provincial governors, well-known powerful politicians and willing media themselves who have learned in the past that ‎”you can’t fight city hall.” Or so they have been taught. In a real and very sad sense, then, media ethics in Thailand is a field of fatalism because there is just too much social baggage for it to thrive.